


a little death (goes a long way)

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Blood, Discussions of Suicide, Dubious Consent, F/M, Implied Past Non-Con, Mild Necrophilia, Omega Rey (Star Wars), The Vampire A/B/O No One Asked For, Vampires, just in case, so bearing that in mind here are tags:, which in turn is going to make me tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:27:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21990052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: “That’s good of you,” he replies.  “Especially with the O-Negative.”“It’s a good deal,” she says and he glances up.  Yeah, because Omega blood is harder to find.  A taste of life, because they almost never survive the turn.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 511
Kudos: 1178





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigbit/gifts).



> ALL RIGHT KIDS
> 
> I'VE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE NOW'S THE TIME TO MAKE BAD FIC CHOICES WE REGRET LATER BECAUSE WHAT ELSE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO POST-TROS. SO HERE'S CHAPTER ONE OF A THING. MIGHT BE ONLY TWO CHAPTERS? MIGHT BE MORE? UNCLEAR BECAUSE I AM LIVING BY MY OWN ADVICE AND FUCK SELF CONTROL.
> 
> this fic is dedicated to tigbit for many reasons:
> 
> 1) she's posting [vampire shit right now](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21909568/chapters/52295305) that inspired me to get off my ass and actually write the vampire abo my gremlin brain thought about when i noticed blood type emojis one day. on that note, in case you didn't, plz mind the tags.  
> 2) she wrote [a real fucking good abo that i strong recommend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19761046).  
> 3) she's one of the kindest most supportive humans i've encountered in this fandom. no but seriously actually.
> 
> thanks to ever-so-reylo for enabling/editing this for me. 
> 
> godspeed rebels.

He hates it, the dead weight of her in his arms.

-

_ “What’s your blood type?” he asks idly, not bothering to check the charts. He’s on blockers so fucking strong he couldn’t smell if he tried. _

_ “O-Negative,” she replies. Universal donor. Awesome. Everyone will want some of this. Tastes like all the good things in this world that are painfully transient. _

_ “All right,” he says and he winds the tourniquet around her upper arm. “It’ll pinch a bit.” _

_ “Yeah, I’ve given blood before.” _

_ She smiles at him and somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, there’s a memory of someone smiling at him like that. Someone who lived a long, long time ago.  _

_ Maybe it’s because she has brown hair.  _

_ “That’s good of you,” he replies. “Especially with the O-Negative.”  _

_ “It’s a good deal,” she says and he glances up. Yeah, because Omega blood is harder to find. A taste of life, because they almost never survive the turn.  _

_ - _

“Please, please, please, please.” It’s a mumbled mantra as he carries her. Her head is lolling, snapped at an odd angle. Her eyes are still open, reflecting the streetlamps overhead. He can’t bring himself to look at her like this.

A graveyard. He has to get her to a graveyard. There has to be an open grave in there. There are always open graves. It’s a big town, people die, and he needs to try, he needs to try.

-

_ He’s been on blockers for years. Really strong ones. He doesn’t like the way B-type blood smells, and A-type blood always makes him aggressive when he scents it, unless it’s AB. But O? O’s the sweet shit. The good shit.  _

_ And humans just fucking donate it. They donate it to the blood banks for hospitals or they sell it outright to the vampire banks for some pretty good cash. But when he’s on the clock, he is on blockers. Doesn’t want bloodlust to get the better of him. He’s seen too many younger, more foolish vampires end up staked for not holding to the pacts, for thinking that they can do whatever they want and then taking it too far.  _

_ Anyway, he’s on blockers. He’s on the strongest blockers because he’s built up a tolerance. _

_ But the second the blood hits the needle it’s all he can do to control himself as he watches it flow through the syringe, through the tube and into the blood bag. _

_ She’s biting her lip as she watches it flow—likely from the pinch of the needle, but it doesn’t help his bloodlust at all. The room is getting brighter as his eyes dilate. He is salivating. His cock is twitching in his pants. He hasn’t eaten recently so thank god he can’t do more than grow a half-flush semi. But the way she smells—she smells— _

_ Like a future. _

_ Like a home. _

_ - _

There’s an open grave, a dark maw in the earth. He doesn’t know when the funeral it is undoubtedly scheduled for is going to take place, but he couldn’t give a flying fuck. He jumps down into it, lays Rey carefully on the ground—not that she can feel anything, fuck fuck fuck, but he’s not going to just drop her. He looks up—looks around. Someone’s going to need to bury them. 

His phone burns in his pocket.  _ Hux,  _ he thinks. But Hux will probably just laugh at him.  _ Trying to turn an Omega? God you are stupider than you look, Ren. _

Because the only person who calls him Ben anymore just died. 

-

_ “You ok there?” she asks him. There’s a twinkle to her eye. _

_ He doesn’t want to open his mouth. If he opens his mouth, he’ll taste her blood on his tongue and then he’s done for. He’s not some first century Alpha, all posturing and no control. He’s been alive for years. Longer than he can even keep track of at this point, something his creator had told him would come to pass. _

You are built for power,  _ Snoke had whispered in his ear when he’d awoken in the dirt.  _ You’ll last. Oh, you’ll last.

_ He grimaces an attempt at a smile at her and she looks down at her arm. “Don’t they give you blockers?” _

_ He nods.  _

_ He wants to look away but he can’t. He notices little things about her—a scar on her wrist, the freckles that trail up her arm to her nose, every shade that makes the hazel of her eyes.  _

Have you been with a vampire before?  _ some part of his mind asks.  _ Have you known what it is to be impaled?

_ But he’s not a half-century Alpha. He’s got enough control to work at the fucking blood vault. And he also knows it’s not professional—at all—to pick up O-negs when they’re donating. There’s a policy against it.  _

_ Yes. _

_ A policy. _

_ So he doesn’t lose a job that doesn’t matter because he’s lived for hundreds of years and won’t die of starvation.  _

_ A policy designed to protect unsuspecting O-Negatives from idiot Alphas like him. _

_ “You can talk. It’s really ok.” _

_ “It’s really not.” _

_ And nothing will ever be the same. _

_ - _

“Look, just fucking do it,” he growls into the phone.

“So you can fail at creating a progeny and look bad before the Leader?” Hux drawls into the phone. “So you can break your heart, and also look like an idiot?”

“Listen—”

“What could possibly go wrong. I’ll be there in ten.”

It was easier than he’d planned. Than he’d dreamed. 

He hates Hux as much as Hux hates him, but Hux is also the only vampire old enough to be trusted to know what to do. You don’t teach the young and stupid how to do shit like this, or else they’ll try it on every corpse and glut the blood market with more young idiots. He stands there for the whole ten minutes looking down at her.

Her neck is snapped and there’s blood dribbling down her nose, out of the corner of her mouth. There’s also blood drying on her scalp from where her head had smacked against the pavement. Once he might have bent down to lick it away but he can’t. Not yet. Now that her heart has stopped pumping, he needs to save every fucking drop to try and get this done.

-

_ How he doesn’t rip her clothes off, tilt her neck and puncture her skin with his teeth he does not know. How he finishes her drain, bandages the pinprick from the needle with a cotton ball and medical tape without pressing her against a wall, he couldn’t say. _

_ He also couldn’t tell anyone how he goes from wishing her a good day and validating her slip so she can receive payment for her blood on the way out to a bar three hours later with her sitting across from him. _

_ She doesn’t look nervous, she doesn’t look afraid. She looks positively cheerful as she downs her Bloody Mary and he has his run-of-the-mill bland-as-fuck AB+ synthate. Her blood has properly scabbed now. And he can’t get past the way that she doesn’t look away from him.  _

_ Humans always look away from him. His eyes are a little intense, he’s been told. He glowers a lot. He’s built like a fucking brick wall and it’s scary. But Rey—her name is Rey—looks at him as though he’s not a monster from a nightmare. She looks at him as though he’s just some guy she met and somehow (he doesn’t know how) they’re at a bar together.  _

_ “There’s just something about you,” she whispers to him towards the end of the night. “I can’t explain it.” _

_ “I’m a vampire,” he deadpans and she rolls her eyes. _

_ “Oh, that must be it.” _

_ And her hand is on his face. Not cupping his cheek, or his chin—somehow it’s far more intimate than that, the way she runs her fingers along his cheekbones, just under his eyes. “Something here,” she whispers. “I think you’re sad the way I am. Lonely the way I am.” _

_ He doesn’t know why he says it. He probably shouldn’t. But— _

_ “You’re not alone.” _

_ And if he had breath to take away, her response would do it. “Neither are you.” _

_ - _

“That was more than ten minutes,” he growls at Hux as he moves through the graves.

“The night’s still young,” the vampire replies, baring his teeth in a humorless smile. “What happened? A little too much fun?”

“She got hit by a fucking bus.”  _ Rey—no!  _ He should have walked her all the way home. He should have broken her phone in the palm of his hand because she’d been looking at it and not oncoming traffic. 

“Oh. That’s less fun, isn’t it.”

“Fuck off.”

He drops himself down in the dirt next to her and Hux takes up the shovel. “Congratulations on your nuptials,” he smirks down at Ben as he drops the first shovel-ful of dirt down onto his face. 

Ben hisses up at him, then brushes the dirt away. Then he turns to Rey, pulling her into his arms. He shreds his wrist with his teeth and presses it to her lips, hoping that some will make it into her mouth. He’ll try. He’ll do all he can.

Then, for the first time, he succumbs. His teeth break the skin of her neck and bliss fills him.

-

_ “Is it true?” she asks him on their fifth date. Fifth, because it had taken him three to hold her hand (some fucking Alpha, but she’s got O-Negative blood, she’s supposed to reduce him to nothing).  _

_ “Is what true?” _

_ She leans into him, the heat of her washing over him as her breath tickles his ear. “That sex is better with a vampire?” _

Is it true that life after death is better with an Omega?

_ He doesn’t ask her that though. He only smiles a tentative smile and she stands on the tips of her toes and her lips press to his and he can feel her heart beating in them, the way they throb as he picks her up and brings her into the single-stall restroom at the back of the bar. Not the classiest place to get laid but Rey sighs as his fingers slip into her, warm and wet and so ready for him so quickly. _

If I bit you, I could knot.

_ But he’s not going to do that. _

_ Because if he bites her, he’s going to drain her dry and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that he wants Rey to live. _

_ - _

He hates how hard he is as he drinks her blood. He hates that he’s harder than he’s ever been in death, painfully hot, and long, and thick, and  _ twitching _ towards her corpse. He could knot for hours like this, with her blood in him fresh the way it is. He feels more alive than he’s felt since he was last alive. 

He’d told her to call him Ben. He still doesn’t know why. Maybe because she’s always made him feel alive. 

He wants to let out a choked sob but he can’t—not when Hux is still shoveling a thick layer of dirt onto them. Because sure, they might be six or so feet under, but if Hux gets wind of him maybe contemplating crying, he’ll never hear the end of it.

Especially because he already knows he’ll never hear the end of it. Because if there’s one thing he’ll believe of Hux, it’s that he’s petty enough to never let him live this down. Never. Not ever.

And why does he have to be so hard right now? She’s dead and his body wants to knot her, knot her, knot her as he drinks her dry. His stomach is starting to distend it’s so full of her blood that hasn’t yet been absorbed into his own. His blood is still dripping into her mouth, onto her tongue. Enough? He doesn’t know. It’s hard to focus on it when every instinct in him as he continues to drink is to tug his pants down his legs and shove himself inside her. 

_ What if she doesn’t want this? What if she does make it through and hates me because I was too weak to let her go? What if she never forgives me? _

He hates himself. He hates that she’s gone. One bus driver whose head Ben wants to rip clean off his shoulders and a phone that got shattered under the bus’ wheel, and Rey dead. He can’t bear it. He can’t. He  _ can’t _ .

He can bear so much, could bear anything at all—but not that.

-

_ She’s so warm, and tight, and slick and he means to take it slow. He really does.  _

_ But they’re in her bed—not in a bathroom this time—and the whole room smells like her and she’s kissing his neck, his jaw, her fingers are in his hair, trailing along his spine, clutching his ass, and she’s pleading him to go faster, deeper, harder, more, more, more and who the fuck is he to deny her? _

_ “Be with me,” she tells him when she takes each of his hands in hers and he’ll be with her—as long as she wants him, he will. He wants to bite her. He wants to glorify in the taste of her, wants to feel her inside him, feel her magnifying his pleasure until he can’t function anymore. But he wants her to live. He needs her to live. He doesn’t feel alive if she doesn’t live. _

_ So he contents himself with kissing her, feeling her pulse in her chest pounding against his as she whimpers and rolls her hips under his. She is so tight, and warm, and the things he will do to her, the things he’ll make her feel. If only he hadn’t been a cheap fuck and bought that O-Negative synthate for dinner then he’d be able to knot her, lock her to him for as long as it took him to finish coming. _

_ God he’s a mess. Three weeks and he’s head over heels and there’s nothing and no one he wouldn’t burn to keep her with him forever. _

_ Is this love? He’s never been in love before. Yes, he’s fucked—he’s hundreds of years old and has needs—but Rey makes him feel like he never has before, the way she moans and sighs and arches. His progenitor would likely call it infatuation. But he doesn’t think it is. _

_ He thinks it’s love. It’s too enduring to be infatuation. He thinks it’s deeper than love, the way she pulses around his cock, the way she scrambles for words and lands on his name as her whole body contracts around him. He thinks it’s more abiding, because when she opens her eyes they’re soft, they’re bright, they see him for everything he forgot he was. _

_ - _

He doesn’t know how much time has passed. This is unbearable.

Once he had clocked time by her breath: when she was content or asleep, breathing was slow—two seconds; when she was awake and excited, less than that. Her heart rate had been his sundial in the dark. 

He thinks the sun has come up though because the earth feels warm around them. A cocoon, a womb, Rey’s cunt whenever he’d been inside it—whatever fucking metaphor works. It’s warm and he is still hard and Rey still isn’t moving. In the dirt he shreds his wrist again. It has started to heal already and he presses more of his blood into her lips. He’s not done drinking her down but that doesn’t matter for now. None of this works if she doesn’t drink him too. 

_ Even if it works, she’ll never breathe again,  _ he tells himself. It’s not oxygen that makes a vampire’s heart pump, it’s some sort of nervous habit. It’s not even  _ necessary _ because the blood isn’t really good for anything except sex and feeding. 

His stomach feels like a balloon that’s going to pop it’s so full of her. He’s never glutted himself this much. It’s nice to know, he supposes, that if he’d ever caved and bitten her, he’d never have been able to fully exsanguinate her—just kill her. 

He keeps drinking.

The more he drinks the more he feels her. The more he drinks, the more he remembers what it was like to be inside her. On, and on, and on he goes. He takes no pleasure in the nutrition anymore. If anything, his body wants to regurgitate it. Should he be pacing himself? But no—no he won’t risk a second of this. If a second is the difference between Rey’s life and not…

He’ll walk into the sun if she dies. He will. He’s killed himself before, he’ll do it again. Fuck Snoke and what he says Kylo’s worth. 

Ben remembers what it was to be alive.

-

_ “How did you become a vampire?” _

_ “That’s a rude question,” Ben tells her. He says it gently enough. Her head is on his chest and they’re lying under the stars, looking up at them. During parts of his afterlife when he hasn’t been in a city with light pollution, he’s counted every one of them. Each and every one of them. _

_ “Well?” _

_ “You’re just going to ignore how rude that is?” _

_ “I was raised without manners so yes. Yes I am.” _

_ Ben swallows. He tries not to think back. The older he gets, the firmer those walls are, but it’s true what everyone says: life memories are still more vivid after thousands of years than death ones. He can see his father’s face, can remember the texture of his mother’s hair. He’d never been good enough for them, family legacy weighing him down, down, down like the stones he’d tied around his feet when he’d walked into the lake.  _

_ “I died,” he told her. “And then my progenitor brought me back. Simple as that.” _

_ “Yes but how—” _

_ “I killed myself,” he replies clipped. “Happy?” _

_ She doesn’t say a word, but she twists her head to look at him better.  _

_ “No,” she whispers. “I’m not. I wouldn’t ever want you to—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” _

_ “It’s rude to ask how someone died. How would you like it if you were you?” _

_ “I guess it would depend how I went,” she says slowly. _

_ “Usually ones who look young like me don’t die of cancer,” he tells her brutally. Hux had been killed by his own father—nevermind that he’d been trying to kill his father at the time; Mitaka had been set upon by a mobster’s dogs.  _

_ “That makes sense,” she whispers. “I meant—though—I meant: how do you become a vampire?” _

_ He gives her a look. Is she asking what he thinks she’s asking? _

_ “I can’t tell you,” he says at last. “You’d have to die, but the rest—we don’t tell anyone until they’re at least four hundred.” _

_ “So you’re older than that?” she asks. _

_ “I don’t remember how old I am.” _

_ He could do the math, he supposed. But he’s not going to. It doesn’t matter, the difference between him and Rey. The only thing that matters is his arms around her and the way she lets out a long slow breath and snuggles closer to him. _

-

He’s overheating. If he’d been alive, he’d be sweating, but there’s too much blood in him. He feels like he could be high, based on how he’s seen humans who are high behave, based on how they’ve described themselves. He can smell the movement of earthworms in the dirt around him. He can taste the darkness around him. She’s always made him feel so good. Of course her blood was going to make him feel this way. He keeps nuzzling at her neck. If there weren’t dirt packed around them, he’d duck his head down for her femoral artery. Blood flows downward more easily. 

His vision sparks a bit. One second he’s sucking Rey’s neck, the next his dick is inside her. She isn’t warm and wet and it feels wrong but he’s too high on her to stop himself. It feels like a desecration, as though her death weren’t a desecration to begin with. 

Comforted in knowing that Hux would be hiding from the sunlight, he lets out a choked sob. He moans how sorry he is into her neck as it takes him an embarrassingly little amount of time to knot in her. He’s too sensitive—she’s made him too sensitive—and he doesn’t know that lasting is a goal. Half of why he’d ever wanted to last was to make her feel good, and she can’t feel anything now.

And he feels a whole world inside himself. Life, life, her life inside him, her lifeblood distending his every organ. He feels alive. It won’t last long if this doesn’t work. But between his cock throbbing and spurting inside her and his tongue and lips and stomach and heart—he feels like he could almost be human; feels like he could never begin to be human.

His hips thrust and his balls tighten and this is the worst. This is the  _ worst.  _ He knows he’s high on her right now, but why had his high mind thought this would be a good idea? Why had it thought this would be gratifying? This is the worst because all he can think of is her smile as she’d kissed him, the way she’d pushed him onto his back and straddled him, her breasts bouncing on her chest, her lips swollen and almost—only ever almost—bruised from him. But she’s not doing any of that now. She’s dead—just  _ dead _ and he’s crying in the dirt and clinging onto her for dear life because even in death, she shouldn’t be alone.

“You’re not alone,” he whispers to her because the words feel like they should be meaningful, because they feel like they should be something. They were magical when he’d spoken them the first time, maybe they’ll be magical again now.

And she groans, and he feels her eyelids flutter against his cheek and he’s choking out, “Rey. Oh god, Rey. Rey.”

Her hips are shifting against his, her legs pulling him closer and he tries to find her lips with his but he can’t.

Can’t because he feels a sharp bite in his neck and Rey groaning and coming as she begins to drink her own blood back down reprocessed through his veins.

“Drink,” he begs her. “Live. Drink. That’s right. That’s right.” He strokes her hair, runs his hands up and down her spine through the dirt. His cock twitches in her and this time it feels good, and right because she clenches a little bit around him and moans as she drinks the blood down.

_ Live,  _ he begs her.  _ Please. Turn. Survive. Live. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading this thing. Seriously—I'm glad it's sparking joy for more people than just my trashy ass. For those of you who spotted the _True Blood_ inspiration for this, my trash ass is finally putting all those seasons I watched to good use. 
> 
> Still have no idea how long this thing is gonna be. I'll keep you posted if I have any insight in the matter as we go along.

Had he always tasted this good?

-

_ She licks her way along his length, swirling her tongue over his tip as he stands there, his fists clenched, his face screwed up as he dribbles a bit of tangy cum onto her tongue. He is long, and thick, and heavy, and the strangest part of it all is that there’s no pulse in the veins of his cock. There’s no warmth, no life. It stands proud, jutting out from his hips, but if she didn’t like him so much it would be unnerving—how obviously dead he is. _

_ “Are you going to open your eyes?” she asks him. She likes it when he looks at her. She likes the way his eyes go hungry, go soft, go needy, go fiery when he watches her.  _

_ “Not if you want to stay alive.” _

_ She laughs, knowing her breath will tickle his skin and she watches the muscles near his hips flex.  _

Would it be so bad?  _ She wonders. She doesn’t say it aloud.  _

_ Finn thinks she’s nuts—dating a vampire.  _

_ Rose warns her to be careful constantly. _

_ Rey’s dated before, and Rey’s fucked before, and it’s only in doing both with a dead man that she understands that what she’d been doing before could only be called a  _ shadow _ of living. Because Ben makes her feel alive. Makes her feel loved. Makes her feel safe, wanted, lusted after—all the things she hadn’t realized she didn’t think she deserved until he pushed her against the wall in that bathroom stall the first time, and kissed her breathless and senseless.  _

_ But he won’t tell her what it means to become a vampire and she can’t tell if it’s some sort of patriarchal paternalistic “I know better than you, don’t worry your pretty little head about it, sweetheart,” or if he’s been truthful about how they don’t tell young vampires, so they definitely can’t tell the living. _

Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t want you. He makes you feel these things because he knows how to after all these years, but he’s just like everyone else: seeing how worthless you are and passing the time before he leaves you behind like garbage.

_ “What’s wrong?” _

_ His eyes are open and his hands are unclenched and he’s looking at her closely. He does that, look at her closely. Sometimes she thinks he sees her better than anyone else does. He gets her in a way that no one else does. _

_ “Nothing,” she lies and she sucks him down, not gagging as he passes into her throat and she nuzzles her nose against the hairs at the base of his cock and he lets out a long, choked out groan and she knows his eyes are closed again.  _

_ If this is transient, then he doesn’t need to know that. _

_ And if this is real—if this is real, then he really doesn’t need to know that. _

_ - _

“Drink,” he begs her. “Live. Drink. That’s right. That’s right.” And she couldn’t do anything else if she wanted to. She’s  _ starving _ and he tastes so damn good. He tastes better than ice cream, better than the finest steak. The memories of both of those flavors are revolting to her now, but she remembers liking them best. She likes Ben best now, the way she feels hotter, more alert, more powerful with every swallow. 

She ruts her hips against his before realizing she can’t really. Oh, he’s inside her, and she can feel his cum shooting against her cervix, but it takes her a moment to realize that this must be what it feels like to be knotted—full and still filling. Pleasure is searing through a corner of her brain, although whether it’s from the delicious stretch of her cunt around him or the way he  _ tastes _ she couldn’t tell.

“Ben,” she thinks she moans into his neck and keeps drinking him down. “Ben.”

-

I think I love Ben. Like really love him.  _ She is staring at the text she’s about to send Finn when she hears the honking of the bus and she’d never really understood the phrase deer in the headlights until she looks up and is too horrified to move. _

-

She drinks until he seems a bit listless. His grip on her hips falters. He never breathes, but there’s something about him that makes it feel like his breathing has gotten shallower. 

“Don’t stop,” he tells her when she pauses, his words slurring a bit. 

“But—”

“No, you won’t kill me. Trust me.”

“But—”

“Just drink, Rey,” and there’s some sort of power to his words that compels her to keep sucking blood out of his neck. He shifts. His arms wrap around her in a hug and she keeps going. He tastes so good, but that doesn’t stop her from worrying.

God she’s never felt this needy—like she can’t stop, like she doesn’t even think stopping is an option. The more she drinks his blood, the more her cunt throbs around his cock, around his knot.  _ He knotted me. _

She’d wanted him to knot her and he’d always hedged on it. But she’d woken needing him and he’d already been there, like he’d known.

-

_ It takes their fifth fucking before she gets up the guts to ask him. _

_ She’s not shy about it—she doesn’t really know how to be shy. But that doesn’t mean that her heart isn’t pounding in her throat as she asks him while he peels her bra off her chest, “Will you knot me?” _

_ He goes very still and he looks up at her through those long brown lashes of his. She watches him weigh it, swallow. “No,” he says slowly. _

_ She tries not to be gutted even as he presses a kiss to her sternum, to her neck, to her chin, to her lips, his mouth crawling up her, trying to ease the sting of rejection. _

_ “Not yet, anyway,” he whispers.  _

_ She nods.  _

_ “Is it something special?” she asks him. The people on /r/vampirefucking are always talking about knotting.  _ He chugged two O-Negative Synthates and then knotted me for two hours and god I’m sore. 

_ “With you, it would be,” he replies after a moment. That’s comforting—sort of. She wonders briefly if it’s a line before he kisses her softly, his hands coming to rest just under her rib cage, holding her steady. He licks his lips a little bit and her breath catches in her throat as she realizes, remembers: _

_ She’s never seen him drink  _ O-Negative Synthate.  _ He always orders  _ AB+ _. And she remembers just how strongly he’d reacted when he’d caught a whiff of her blood the day she’d gone into the bank. “Is it something about my blood?” she asks him.  _

_ He lets out a huff that could be a laugh. “Yeah,” he replies. “It’s something about your blood.” And he looks at her. “Look, if I knot you, I want your blood in my mouth. And I don’t know that I can drink your blood without draining you too much. So just...just not yet, ok? I’d rather have you alive.” _

_ And she smiles. “I can live with that.” _

_ - _

His knot abates after a point. She doesn’t know how long. All she knows is that when she does, she feels heat begin to pool inside her. She begins to whimper as he pulls himself out of her. “No,” she whispers. “Please—I—”

Can vampires get feverish? That wasn’t something that had ever come up on /r/vampirefucking and sure wasn’t something that she’d ever thought to ask Ben before. 

“Shh,” he whispers. “It’ll be ok. It’ll—”

“Ben,” she whimpers. The heat is growing and it’s unpleasant. It’s like all the blood she’s consumed—and she’s consumed a  _ lot _ of it has gone right to her groin. Everything feels swollen and sticky and needy and it doesn’t matter if he’s just spent hours coming inside her, if he’s stretched her out more than she’d thought was possible, she needs more.

“It’s the bloodlust,” he tells her, as if she’s supposed to know what that means. 

“Ben,” she whimpers again and she reaches her hand down between them. How come he’s not hard right now? Hasn’t he been drinking as much blood as she had? Or has she drained him of what he needs to maintain an erection? He told her to keep drinking. She kept drinking but she wants him—needs him. She pumps at his cock, trying desperately to make it harder, thicker, stiffer. “Please.”

He makes a pained noise in the back of his throat and she tilts her head to the side, pressing it into the dirt around them. The cut in her neck, the one he’d been sucking on when she’d woken up has closed. If he drinks her blood, he’ll get hard again, won’t he?

“Not yet,” he says. “Not till nightfall.”

“Ben.” She tries not to whine, tries not to beg. She has her pride. 

But her cunt has other ideas. It’s getting hotter and wetter by the second and she finds her hips widening, her legs kick the dirt as she wraps them around his leg and begins to grind against it.

“Rey, stop.”

“Ben.”

“I’m covered in dirt. It’s not—”

“Sanitary? We were just fucking in the dirt.”

He lets out a hiss and his fingers are between her legs. He shoves four of them into her stretched out cunt and she whines and rocks against his hand. It helps—sort of. Not the way she wants it to. Not the way she needs it to.

“Just a little while longer.”

“When’s nightfall?” she asks him. The dirt around them is so warm, and she can smell everything about it. But most of all she can smell Ben. Ben and his blood and  _ fuck _ he smells so good. He’s always smelled good but this is something else. This is better than everything else. Her mouth is watering, her  _ cunt _ is watering and she’s holding him as close as she can.

And it’s not enough. It’s just not enough.

“Soon,” he tells her, his voice sounding strained. Can he smell her the way she smells him? He must know how much she needs this. He has to. He’s been a vampire for hundreds of years, had called it  _ the bloodlust _ as though it were common to wake up with a new vampire needing to fuck her brains out. It probably is. 

“How soon?” She sounds close to tears. She is close to tears. There are tears welling in her eyes. 

“Soon, I promise, sweetheart.”

_ Sweetheart.  _

-

_ “Look, I’m just saying—I really think he cares about me.” _

_ Finn gives her a look. “Weren’t you the one saying not two days ago how there was this post on /r/vampirefuckers—” _

_ “Finn,” Rey tries, but he’s on a roll. _

_ “Where the person was crushed because her vampire had told her he loved her, and then he left her saying he’d found someone who tasted better?” _

_ “Ben’s not like that.” _

_ “And how worried you were that would happen to you.” _

_ “Finn—” _

_ She knows he’s trying to be protective of her, but honestly it grates. She’s a big girl who can take care of herself. She knows how to take care of her heart. She has a low bullshit tolerance, which is mostly what she attributes to having been single for as long as she has been. And yes, she’s scared, but isn’t that the point of trying this sort of thing—looking your fear and vulnerability in the face and wondering if you matter? _

_ Ben makes her feel like she matters.  _

_ She sees it in the way she catches him watching her, his eyes soft and brown. The way he’s always got an arm around her, pulling her close. The way he doesn’t want to knot her—far from the initial rejection it had initially seemed—feels like it’s  _ because _ he cares about her. Like he’s trying to resist his darker urges for her.  _

_ “I’m just saying—I don’t want you to break your heart over a vampire.” _

_ Rey swallows. That inkling. That shadow of a doubt. That slight fear, like Ben’s always pulling back from her, just a little bit.  _

_ “I’ll be ok,” she tells him. “I can take care of myself.” _

_ “I don’t want you to have to even get that far,” and she sees concern in his eyes. He’s always so protective of her. She’s grateful for it, for the most part. She’d never had family until Finn, the brother she’d found in burgeoning adulthood. But sometimes he can go a bit too far. Because she  _ can _ take care of herself. _

_ - _

She feels like she’s on fire—like her blood is boiling beneath her skin, like she’s dying. She’s crying, she’s babbling incoherently, and she keeps drinking Ben’s blood because he keeps telling her to do it. It still tastes sweet—so very sweet, the best thing she’s ever tasted—but the more she drinks it, the more she’s on fire.

_ The bloodlust.  _ She could kill him. Is that in line with bloodlust?

She’s only vaguely aware when the weight of the dirt gets lighter over her. She’s vaguely aware of Ben going still in her arms, then kissing her neck and holding her close and fumbling between them to tug her skirt down and tuck himself away in his trousers again. She whimpers. The movement makes delicious friction against her skin. And yet that only makes the fire burn hotter. 

“Hux?” he calls.

“Who else would it be?” comes an amused voice. “It’s dark. You can come up now if you like. May as well leave her down there.”

Ben pauses. Then he brushes his lips against her neck and the fire sparks inside her as his lips trace along her now-still jugular. 

“Or you could just make me do all the work of digging,” the voice says, not even bothering not to sound passive aggressive.

“I can’t let go of her just yet,” he says. “I don’t want to leave her in her bloodlust.”

The shifting dirt above them stops. 

“Did she survive the turn?” Hux asks sharply.

Ben doesn’t reply and Hux lets out a curse. “The progenitor isn’t going to like this.”

“I find that I don’t really care what the progenitor has to say at this point,” Ben says. His lips are now brushing along the shell of her ear. The breath that escapes his body as he talks is soothing. Sort of. “I have my own progeny to take care of now.”

He nudges his nose against Rey’s, and she whimpers again.  _ Your own progeny, but I’m burning, Ben. Help me.  _ Does she say that out loud?

And the dirt is being shoved away and Rey looks up and when was the darkness ever this bright? It’s as bright as daylight right now, but she knows it’s not from the nature of the shadows. Strange. She hisses and closes her eyes, but not before she catches sight of a vampire—pale and red haired and furious.

“She really survived,” Hux says, sitting back on his feet. “You really turned an Omega and she survived.”

“Yes,” Ben says. Rey doesn’t know who this Hux is, but it sounds as though they don’t have what she’d term a friendly rivalry.

Her hunch was right: “Well, if you need help with—” Hux begins, half smirking but Ben hisses at him, his fangs extending out, long and menacing. 

Hux stands up. He looks livid, as though he’s been denied the only thing he ever wanted. Then he jumps back up out of the grave and without a word, disappears into the night.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the word  _ trouble _ crosses her mind. 

But she can’t think about that right now because Ben is rolling her around and getting to his feet, extending his hand.

“Come,” he whispers, and the only thing she can do is obey.

-

_ He pauses midthrust, frustration filling his face. _

_ “I have to go.” And he pulls out of her, still hard, fumbling around in the darkness to try and find his pants. _

_ “What’s going on?” _

_ “My progenitor needs me.” _

_ “Can’t he wait?”  _

_ “He probably can, but I have to obey.” He points to his head and grimaces. “Vampire thing.” _

_ “What if it’s an emergency?” _

_ “I can’t explain. I don’t want to go.” He looks at her pleadingly.  _

_ “What happens if you stay?” _

_ “I’ll go mad.” _

_ She swallows and sits up. His eyes drip over her chest, her stomach, her hips. She pulls his head down to hers, kisses him swiftly.  _

_ “Go then. But come back?” _

_ “Just as soon as I can.” _

_ She won’t cry, she won’t cry, she won’t as he disappears from her room and she throws herself against her pillows. She  _ hates _ being left behind.  _ He’s not really leaving me. He said he’ll be back.

_ And in the past four months, there hasn’t been a single time that Ben hasn’t been true to his word, that he hasn’t meant everything he’s ever said.  _

_ She presses her face into the pillow that’s mostly his when he stays over. It smells like him. It smells so good. He just smells so good. Someone on /r/vampirefuckers said that his lover smelled like rot and death and it made him gag but the sex was too good to stop. But Ben has only ever smelled perfect. _

-

She runs faster than she’s ever run in her life. The world blurs around her. Ben’s hand is in hers, guiding her through the night. 

Everything’s always felt right when her hand has been in his. He’s grimy and covered in dirt, and she’s sure she looks as much a mess, but he’s never looked more beautiful as he does now.

-

_ He’s gone for the next week. He texts her. He’s not good at texting. Too old and set in his ways, but he endeavors all the same. _

Thinking of you,  _ comes through around noon one day and she imagines him in his equivalent of a sleepless night, wanting to see her but unable to. _

_ The next one is a string of emojis—different colored hearts and flowers and she wonders how much thought he’d put into each one. She can’t tell if it’s that men are bad at articulating feelings, or vampires are, or if it’s just Ben. She thinks it’s the latter. _

I’ll be back soon, I promise,  _ comes at sunset the day before he appears on her front doorstep, the equivalent of his hat in his hand. He looks so relieved when he sees her coming home from work and she can but be relieved that he’s there as he pulls her into his arms and sways with her for a moment before kissing her.  _

_ “Hi,” he whispers. _

_ “Hi,” she replies.  _

_ She’d expected him to fuck her into the mattress, but he doesn’t. She’d expected to have the best sex of her existence, but instead he just holds her for hours, strokes little circles into different stretches of her skin. He rubs his nose against the length of hers, he inhales deeply—not out of necessity, because he isn’t talking, but because he wants to breathe her in. He wants to taste the air around her.  _

_ She remembers earlier wonderings—if she meant a lot to him, if it was all just pretend. And she knows—just knows—that this is something special, something meaningful, something otherworldly as he keeps her pressed to his chest.  _

_ “What happened?” she asks him after she doesn’t know how long. _

_ He just shakes his head. “Nothing as important as this.” _

_ Later, when he’s gone away for the day and Rey hadn’t slept a wink all night and knows she’ll be a mess at work, she sends him a text. Everything she hadn’t known how to say the night before. _

You make me feel like I matter. You’re not the first person to do this, but I spent so much of my life thinking I didn’t that it never stops hitting me like a bus. And from you it’s something I can’t explain. I don’t know. 

I love you,  _ she wants to add but doesn’t. She’s never been in love before, and there’s still that lingering wonder, the one that Finn had brought up, that crops up every few days on /r/vampirefuckers. Like clockwork, someone writes a long post about how convinced they were their partner loved them and how crushed they were to find out it had just been a ruse to feel alive for a bit, to fuck around and then go back to whatever had happened. If she says  _ I love you  _ then she knows down in her gut that he’ll be gone. That’s what happens with people she loves. And she’s selfish. This isn’t an  _ if you love him, let him go,  _ sort of thing. She wants him to stay for as long as she can have him. She wants… _

-

She’s never been in Ben’s apartment before. It’s a basement apartment, and all the windows have blacked-out windows that won’t let daylight in. He doesn’t turn on the lights when they pass through the door, but she doesn’t need the lights. She just needs Ben.

She pounces on him and her tongue is down his throat and he’s holding her, guiding her through the apartment, taking her clothes off her skin and at last—at  _ last _ . She hadn’t realized how much she’d hated wearing clothes until he strips them off her back. One of his hands is between her legs again, pumping four fingers into her once again, while the other hand leaves her and a moment later, she hears water running.

“To get the dirt off,” he tells her. She doesn’t know how to say she doesn’t care about the dirt, especially when he says, “Get in.” And it’s a bit dreamlike, the way her body does it. The water is cool, but it burns against her too-hot skin. She hisses and reaches for him. He’s shrugging out of his own clothes, dropping his pants and stepping into the water with her. 

“I’m here,” he whispers.

“Ben.”

“I know, sweetheart.”  _ Sweetheart _ .

“Ben, please.” The water is burning, boiling—or maybe that’s just her. “Ben, I need—”  _ You. Please. Now. I just—Please. Whatever this is, I can’t take it much more. _

And his lips are at her neck, his teeth are at her neck and he’s biting down and she’d never thought it would send a lance of pleasure through her, having her skin pierced like that. But it does. It does, and he starts to drink her down, his hand pumping his dick for a moment as it begins to stiffen. He lets out a long groan, a deep groan, and then he’s pressing her against the wall of the shower stall, pressing  _ into _ her and yes, yes, yes this is what it is to live.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check the end-chapter notes for some potential triggers that exist in this chapter. Both are implied rather than explicit.

Ben has known bodies before—the shape of them, the heat of them, the way that blood throbs in them. He has feasted on guts and viscera, has seen how fragile and how strong they are at once. 

He’s been gentle with Rey before.  _ Breakable,  _ some part of his brain had told him. Maybe the same part that had thought she wouldn’t survive the turn. O-Negatives are weaker than the rest, more delicate. Rey’s feisty, but her constitution must not be able to take it. And however she’d pleaded for more, however she’d told him she could take it, he’d always held back.

Now, though—now he doesn’t hold back.

Her cunt is hot and tight and so  _ wet _ . Slick is dripping down her legs as he carries her out of the shower and throws her—still soaking—onto his bed. He covers her with his body, his hands on her wrists, his knees between her legs and she’s whining, arching up towards him and god her tits are unreal, have always been unreal. Her stomach is swollen, flushed from the blood she’d drunk from his neck. He looks like he has a beer gut from her, but he doesn’t care. She doesn't care. The only thing that matters is—yes, that, just there—the way she feels when he slides into her.

“Fuck,” he grunts as he loses control of his hips, as they piston into her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

His knot swells in record time, locks them into place as he collapses down onto her as he comes and comes and comes. He doesn’t understand how his body still has spunk left in it after the grave, but it does, and it keeps on spurting into her. He tries to let his breath catch. He’d forgotten how all-consuming it was to knot someone, to come nonstop for minutes on end, to feel your face relax into the rare smile, to feel your muscles lose tension they’d carried since before you died. He’d been too blitzed on her and fear for it to really feel this way before.

He’s trembling as he hovers over her, and it takes him a moment to realize she’s pulling him down onto her chest, letting his weight crush her as she sighs and wriggles herself onto him more, as though trying to pull his knot deeper. 

He reaches down between them, finds her clit and rubs it twice and she falls apart and he’s never seen anything more beautiful in all his years.

-

It’s easier when he’s coming in her. Better somehow. She can see straight again, and it doesn’t feel like her skin is on fire. She rubs her lips along his neck. 

She can smell his blood through his skin. Once she might have thought it was sweat, or pheromones, but something tells her that vampires don’t sweat. But her nose tells her it’s blood. His blood. So good.  _ Memorize this scent,  _ something tells her.  _ This is what safety smells like. _

He keeps fingering at her clit even after she’s come twice. He’s still coming, he looks years younger than he is. He has rolled them onto his back so she’s splayed across his chest and he just keeps nudging at her sensitive skin.  _ If I’m coming, you should be too,  _ she feels in his fingertips. And it helps. 

It’s  _ strange _ to come without a heart. She is used to her pulse pounding in her chest, in her cunt, in her lips, her heart rocking against her rib cages until it’s settled again. Now it’s like a wave is washing over her, though how, she doesn’t know. She’s not sure she cares. This is the best orgasm she’s had in her life. Even better than when she was alive. Her vision practically sparkles when she leaves her eyes open. Her mind feels like it’s expanding inside her. Everything feels softer, gentler, and yet also overpoweringly intense.

She clings to him. He’s the only thing that makes sense right now. Her body doesn’t, her mind doesn’t, but Ben—kissing her, fucking her, whispering soft words that don’t really tie together because he’s too lost in the way she feels—that makes sense. She presses her lips against his neck. She doesn’t kiss, she doesn’t bite, she just presses. There’s no pulse there. She’s never known there to be. He smells so good. 

“Hi,” she whispers to him. He’s still spurting inside her, and his arms just tighten around her. 

“Hi,” he replies. His eyes are sort of glowing at her. Not literally, ut he looks so happy as he gazes at her, so contented. She’s never seen him look this peaceful, never seen him look this young. It’s hypnotic, it’s enrapturing. She brushes her lips against his. 

“Bloodlust?” she asks him.

“Right,” he says and the glow fades. It’s not gone, but it dulls as he tries to drag himself out of his pleasure. She feels almost guilty about it, except somehow she senses that the burning out-of-her-mind need will be back sometime soon.

“Your body needs blood,” he says. “It isn’t nourished right now, and it won’t be fully nourished for several days. So you’re hungry and need to eat. And ordinarily…” he pauses, then half sits up under her, looking around the room. Then he shakes his head. “When my knot chills,” he says and it sounds like a reminder to himself. “Anyway—you need to eat, and when you eat  _ too _ much, it makes you horny. That’s just a thing for everyone. Helps get the juices flowing as it were. But because you need to eat this much, it’s making your whole body sort of riot with need. So bloodlust.”

Rey nods. That seems to make sense. Except—

“So I should just drink from you until—” She frowns. It stopped making sense. 

“Yes, and no,” he tells her, knowing what she’s trying to wrap her mind around. His fingers are tracing up and down her spine, sending shivers across her skin. She nuzzles her face into his neck. “I needed you to drink from me because if you didn’t get enough blood into you while you were turning, you would have died. Even if you weren’t an Omega, you would have died if you hadn’t gotten enough blood. But my blood isn’t enough to sustain your hunger. There’s a reason vampires feed on humans and not just each other.”

“But you taste delicious.” She feels like she should be blushing, except her heart doesn’t work anymore. She wants to keep biting him, keep tasting him.

He smiles at her. “So do you,” and there’s a heat to his voice that makes her cunt clench around his knot. He lets out a little groan and his eyes flutter shut for a moment and she feels him spurt even more into her. 

“Anyway,” he says when he can manage opening his eyes again, “I taste delicious, but I’m not nourishing. Our blood isn’t human blood. It’s good for keeping us functioning, but it’s like trying to live off potato chips and wine.”

“I like potato chips and wine,” Rey says automatically. Except she doesn’t anymore. But if Ben is potato chips and wine, she likes it.

“Yeah, but some vegetables are good for you, I hear. Some chicken wouldn’t hurt.”

“Theoretically,” she concedes.

“Theoretically.”

“What happens if I eat human food?” she asks him.

“Bodily functions like you’ve never experienced them,” he replies darkly. Rey flinches and he nods up at her. “Can’t say I recommend.”

“Farewell, chocolate,” she sighs sadly. But she doesn’t crave chocolate right now. Usually, she wants chocolate when she’s horny. She doesn’t think that’s abnormal for a human. But right now, all she wants is Ben. He’s watching her, still stroking her back.

“I feel like I’m going to be asking a lot of questions,” she says slowly.

“You probably will be,” he says. “Ask away. No such thing as a stupid question when your body transforms into a different thing.”

Rey swallows. The question that bubbles to the top of her mind hides behind her lips for a long moment before she asks it. “You keep calling me an Omega,” she says. “What does that mean?”

-

_ “And here you are, the strongest Alpha I’ve ever created!” Snoke’s voice echoes in the darkness. Ben doesn’t feel strong. He feels dirty, hungry—and most of all confused. He doesn’t want to be alive. Why is he still alive? Or is this hell? It should be hell—it is a sin to take one’s own life. And the way that his body’s just been used… _

_ “Let’s look at you. Come here.” And his body moves towards Snoke. Snoke is taller than he is, and he reaches down and touches Ben’s face. He parts his lips with his fingers, examining the teeth that had cut through the other’s flesh when he’d gotten too close. “Yes,” he says. “Good strong incisors. Everything about you is perfect.” _

_ The way he says it makes Ben want to smile, want to stand taller. And yet it also makes his skin crawl. He wants to fight, and fuck, and drink blood. He truly is a demon, a sin.  _

_ “His bloodlust is off him?” Snoke asks Hux. There are no signs of the cuts that Ben and Hux had given one another. There was no bruising from their struggles. Ben’s muscles feel taught as a bowstring and he refuses to look at the other— _

_ “Yes, progenitor,” Hux replies and there’s a smirk to his voice that makes Ben want to rip his head from his shoulders. _

_ “Good,” Snoke replies. “Are you ready, my progeny?” _

_ “Ready for what?” Ben asks when it becomes clear that this time, he should speak. _

_ “Your destiny.” _

_ - _

Ben’s hand keeps tracing a circle into the small of her back. His tongue darts out to lick his lips and Rey’s eyes drop to it. She wants to suck on it. But he’s talking now, and she can’t.

“There’s…” he fumbles for words. She can’t remember him ever having fumbled for words before. “There’s a lot of structures that just don’t have analogies in humans. You can be an Alpha, a Beta, or an Omega. It’s based on what type of blood you had when you were alive. Alphas…” he makes a face. “Grossly oversimplifying, we fight more. Not necessarily better, just more. We get angry faster, we can be a bit possessive.” His hand stops circling, but only because he’s wrapping his arm around her hip, pulling her closer. “We can knot,” he adds.

“Not all vampires can knot?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Just Alphas.”

“So all those posts on /r/vampirefuckers about how they don’t think their lover wants them because they refuse to knot—”

“Probably fucking a Beta who doesn’t want to go into the ins-and-outs of what all this shit means with someone whose closest understanding of it will be gender.”

“Is it like gender?” Rey asks.

He opens his mouth as if to respond quickly before closing it and considering. When at last he speaks again, it’s with a thoughtfulness that feels strange when paired with the way he is still coming inside her. “It’s been such a long time since I really thought about gender,” he says. “So maybe. It doesn’t feel the same, but it might be similar.” Then he frowns. “Gender doesn’t matter much when you can’t have children, we’ve found. Then it becomes about how you fuck, and honestly that’s just parts. But—”

He stares at her for a long time, as though really seeing her, as though something is finally hitting him. 

“But,” she prompts.

“I’ve never met an Omega,” he says slowly. “They don’t usually survive the turn. And I guess you’d call it legend at this point—legend has it that Omegas can have children.”

-

Ben watches her closely as he says it. He watches as she frowns, and then looks down between them to where he’s literally overflowing her with cum. 

“What if I don’t want—” she begins nervously and he cuts her off.

“It’s just a legend,” he says, trying to ease her. He can  _ smell _ her disquiet and he doesn’t like it. Every instinct in his mind is rioting against it.  _ Your progeny doesn’t want this.  _ He feels like he’s going to be sick if she keeps feeling like this. He can’t bear it, the distress in his nose. 

How on  _ earth _ had Snoke handled him? He’d been distressed so much in his earliest days as a vampire.

Or maybe Snoke had just not cared.

“It’s just a legend, and if it happens we’ll…”

“What, get an abortion?” Rey asks sharply. “Would that even work medically.”

“I don’t know,” Ben says carefully. Her scent is cloying at him, angry, frightened and his knot starts to go down. His stomach is rioting, worse than the one time he’d made the mistake of trying to eat food after he’d turned. “But we’ll figure it out. It is just a legend.”

“You saying that doesn’t help because when I was a kid, vampires were just a legend too.” He can feel her panic. Not in a heartbeat, not in a shortness of breath, but in a tension in her muscles, trembling and coiled and ready to propel her forward.

She’s frightened. So frightened. Which doesn’t surprise him because her body is new to her, this life is new to her, the mere concept of an unwanted—

—an unwanted child.

He tightens his hold on her and kisses her as gently as he can. 

“Only things you want,” he promises her. “You won’t be your parents.”

The coil relaxes. She melts across his chest, relief palpable in the air around them. She makes a sound he recognizes as crying and he reaches a hand up to wipe the blood from her eyes with his fingers. Then he licks them clean.  _ Delicious.  _ She was always going to be delicious.

“Do I really cry blood?” she asks him.

“Yes.”

“Metal.”

“Extremely.”

He smiles at her. Yeah, he’s stopped coming. His knot is gone and gently, he rolls Rey off his chest and gets to his feet, crossing the room in the darkness.

“Where are you going?” she asks him. 

“Ordering you some vegetables,” he says, pulling up his phone. He  _ hates _ phones. Hates them. The only thing this thing was good for had been calling Rey (or texting her when absolutely necessary) and ordering blood when he couldn’t go out to find it for himself. Only twice before had he used this app: both times when Snoke hadn’t let him out of his sight. So he scrolls through the vendor options as he strolls back to the bed before picking one with the shortest delivery time and—

Is it weird to give an Omega O-Negative blood? Would she even like it? She won’t know what flavor she likes yet.

He puts a bag of each in his cart and presses the check-out button. Let her try, let her choose her preference. Then he puts the phone on the bedstand, and almost at once Rey’s lips are at his throat. “What if I don’t want vegetables? What if I just want chips and wine?”

“I won’t stop you.” 

“It won’t ruin my appetite?” she asks.

“You are literally insatiable right now, so no. It won’t. And I’d never deny you,” he says and her teeth pierce his skin again. 

-

She’d never really thought about needing birth control with Ben before. He was dead, and genetically different, and all that other stuff. They hadn’t needed a condom, ever. 

She tries not to think about needing one, or wanting one right now as she sucks on his blood. It tastes as good as it did earlier. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to the way he tastes, the way it makes her feel like she’s blooming to suck him down, to take his life into her mouth and let it nourish her, even if it’s only chips and wine.

She spreads her legs because  _ of course _ she does, when he tastes like this. She’s wet and still full to the point of leaking his cum out of her, but she wants more of this, more of him, more of an orgasm that doesn’t throb, but somehow manages to shake like an earthquake when she comes. His fingers circle her clit, dipping down to finger her, to guide the cum that’s dripped out of her back into her. Every organ of hers is going to be full of him. Her stomach, her intestines, her cunt and uterus. She’s swollen and full and the more she drinks, the more she wants him.

She reaches her hand down to pump at his cock again, to try and guide him into her, but he doesn’t let her.

“I need to be able to get your food when it comes,” he tells her. “I’ll knot you again once you’ve eaten your veggies.”

“Fine,” Rey mutters and closes her eyes. This feels amazing, the way he’s holding her, taking care of her. He’s always been attentive but this—this is more than she’d ever known she could bear. How much of her life had been spent forcing herself to take care of herself and now—

Now Ben’s kissing her, and letting her drink his blood down. Now his hands are everywhere she didn’t know she needed. He’s whispering words in her ears that are filthy and sweet and heartfelt and comforting and she feels so at ease.

And he smells—he smells like the only thing she’s ever wanted, the only thing that’s ever wanted her, her creator and creation. She can smell how happy he is, can taste it in the blood she’s drinking. He is pleased with her, he is grateful to have her, his everything is better because she’s there. Mindreading isn’t a thing she’d ever thought she could do—and that’s not what this is. But she knows him better, knows him in ways she didn’t know she could know anyone and when her body arches and stars fill her mind again, she can taste the joy he takes from her on her lips. 

“What happens if I don’t eat my veggies?” she asks him as her body relaxes into a warm stupor. She snuggles into his chest, burrowing as deep into him as she can. His lips brush against her cheek. 

“You’ll go mad,” he says, and she goes still, looking up. 

“What?”

“We don’t die from starvation. Our bodies can find ways of sustaining themselves,” he says. “But you’ll shrivel up—sort of like being dehydrated—and your mind will stop being able to maintain itself. You’ll be ravenous, out of control…” his voice trails away. “And not in the good way.” His thumb nudges her breast. His dark eyes are so serious as he looks at her. “A monster worse than what humans always thought we were. And while it’s possible to get someone to heal themselves by drinking blood, usually in such cases the vampire is put down.”

Rey swallows.

“So eat your veggies,” he tells her and Rey smiles up at him. 

“I will,” she promises.

It’s at that moment that there’s a knock on his door. “Perfect timing.” He grins down at her and climbs out of the bed. She watches him cross the room, stretching and appreciating the sharp cut of him in the darkness—his broad shoulders, his muscular back, the tight, bulging muscles of his ass. He’s always been perfect, always been beautiful, but it’s like her eyes can see that more clearly now—or maybe it just feels that way because she can see him so clearly in the dark.

He doesn’t bother dressing when opening the door and Rey has a moment of trying to determine whether or not she thinks the poor delivery person is lucky or unlucky because of it before Ben’s scent hits her hard.

_ Frightened. _

_ Angry. _

And then he’s being thrown backwards across the apartment, hitting the wall with a sharp crack. Faster than lightning, he’s on his feet again, crouching low, his body now between her and the door, and Rey knows without being able to see him that his long, perfect teeth are extended and ready to bite. 

The vampire who has stepped through the door is tall—taller even than Ben. His eyes are a light blue, his skin pale as the moon, and his skull is dented and scarred. His eyes travel from Ben, crouched before him, hissing, to Rey, who is suddenly extremely aware that he can see her cunt still dripping with Ben’s cum. The vampire smirks and she shifts, getting to her knees, unsure if she, too, should be preparing to fight.

“So it’s true,” the vampire says at last, his gaze returning to Ben. “You really went and threw everything away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) There is an implication of past non-con (Ben as the victim after he became a vampire). Hop from “And here you are, the strongest Alpha I’ve ever created!” to “Yes, progenitor,” Hux replies ...
> 
> 2) There is discussion of pregnancy and abortive methods in this chapter; no character in this story will get pregnant.


	4. Chapter 4

“Answer me.”

For the first time in years, Ben doesn’t feel any compulsion at all. This creature that had made him, that had shaped him, that had used his strength and given lip-service to caring for him—Ben feels no need to answer him at all.

He stands there for a long while just staring. Is this elation—not feeling his mind begin to compress in on itself as he just stares at his progenitor?

Snoke’s eyes flick back towards Rey and Ben growls. “You won’t look at her.”

Snoke’s eyebrows fly up his forehead. “Is that so?” he asks. “What—you wish to protect your…” and Snoke sniffs. His blue eyes widen. Then his face splits into a leer. “Degenerate.”

Ben stiffens, his lips pulling back in a snarl as Snoke continues. “If you wanted to fuck her, you should have told me and I’d have had her changed for you.”

Ben doesn’t even know what to say to that. Because he had thought—had been  _ convinced— _ that Rey wouldn’t survive the turn, any turn. It had been an act of desperation, what he’d done with her in the dirt, denial of an existence in which she wasn’t there with him anymore. “I’d have let you see her through her bloodlust,” Snoke continues. 

_ No you wouldn’t have—you’d have given her to Hux and called it an act of kindness,  _ Ben doesn’t say. 

_ Can he really not smell that she’s an Omega? _

Her scent is cloying in his nose, he can still taste her sweet, sweet blood in his mouth. Surely Snoke can scent it too. Unless he’s so old that his senses have dulled. 

“But no,” Snoke continues. “No—you have always been governed by impulse—not a modicum of self control and so here we are—you fucking your progeny like a degenerate who’s younger than  _ she _ is. By rights, she should be mine and you—” He bares his teeth. 

Ben has never seen Snoke bare his teeth before and god they are long—longer than all of time, thick and strong, pearlescent white bone. 

“You are a  _ waste _ of the years I put into you.” And Snoke lunges for his throat.

Ben’s reflexes are quick—that’s part of what’s always made him such a powerful Alpha. He’s not just built like a brick wall, he’s faster than instinct. And he could have handled Snoke’s attack—of that he’s sure.

But the “No!” rips out of his lips the moment Rey collides with him, shoving him out of the way, and he watches as if in slow-motion as Snoke’s teeth dig into her neck.

-

Rey isn’t an idiot. She can make educated guesses about why she is the way she is. How many  _ daddy issues _ jokes has she heard throughout her whole life? How she’s looking for older men to take care of her.  _ I guess with a vamp it’ll be more like granddaddy issues, am I right?  _ Poe had teased more than once before Rose had told him to can it. 

She doesn’t think her body produces adrenaline anymore. Her heart is decidedly not pounding in her chest. But watching Snoke berate Ben, watching him treat him as though he’s lower than worthless, as though he’s stupid, as though he’s weak, as though he’s a  _ degenerate _ , and then go in to physically attack him—

Rey knows deep down in her heart why that hurts her, understands the dark corners of her mind that propel her forward without examining the details she’s made herself forget. 

Snoke’s teeth are sharp, but don’t pierce any worse than Ben’s as he cuts into her throat. 

Ben’s shoving him back almost at once, his own teeth bared, a hand outstretched behind him, splayed wide as if trying to hold Rey back, away. 

She watches as her blood drips from Snoke’s incisors, watches as he licks it away, and then watches as his eyes seem to glow slightly differently.

“ _ Omega _ ,” he hisses and he looks at Ben again with a curiosity that definitely hadn’t been there before. “You turned an Omega.”

“Get out,” Ben commands.

“You turned and fucked an Omega.” Snoke repeats it as though he is weighing it afresh every time he says the words. “Well, this is quite unexpected.”

“Get out of my apartment,” Ben growls again. “You were not invited and you carry no further bond with me. Get out.”

“Or you’ll have the council summon me?” Snoke sneers. 

“Get. Out.” Ben growls again. 

To Rey’s complete and utter shock, Snoke retreats, but not before saying, “I’m sure we’ll be seeing one another again, Omega.”

Ben slams the door behind him and immediately his lips are on her throat where Snoke had bitten her, licking her blood away, kissing her. “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs over and over again. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she promises him, pulling him close, holding him close. Now that Snoke is gone, the gravity of it all hits her. He could easily have killed her, and far more permanently than that bus had. He could have hurt Ben, hurt either of them. And he certainly seemed to think they didn’t—they shouldn’t—

“Why was he calling you a degenerate?” Rey asks and Ben freezes, his lips still at her throat.

Ben pulls away slowly and there’s such a nervousness to his face now. 

“Because I’m your progenitor,” he says. “It’s...it’s taboo for a progenitor to fuck their progeny.”

Rey frowns. “Is it like...incest?”

He grimaces. “As a simile, I suppose,” he says carefully. “I’m not your father, and what exists between us isn’t what exists between a parent and a child—it’s deeper.” And his grimace deepens. “But if the parallel helps…”

“But I want to fuck you,” Rey whispers. “I love you.”

She hadn’t said it aloud—not while she’d been alive, and not since she’d died. She’d been texting about it when the bus had hit her, it had been her last living thought and it’s as powerful now as it was then. Moreso because she’s tasted his blood, writhed on his knot, survived death because of him.

Ben looks almost pained as he stares at her, as though he’s afraid of what comes next.  _ Is he going to pull away from me? Because he’s just been reminded we shouldn’t—we can’t— _

But no, no his lips are on hers. It’s not a hungry kiss—at least not at first. It starts off chaste, and sweet and slowly he deepens it, his tongue slipping between her lips, tracing her teeth, dancing with her own. 

“More than my own life,” he whispers to her, and he carries her back to bed.

-

_ “We don’t do love,” Asajj tells him once his knot has cooled. He’s young—less than a hundred years since his turn—and naive. Asajj is cold and distant, and he thought that was what he wanted when he’d let her take him to bed a few times. With cold and distant, you always knew where you stood. And yet the more he sees her, the more he finds he wants her to smile at him, the more he wants her to want to see him. He wants her to be perhaps a little less cold, and a little less distant. And she notices this. _

_ “What?” _

_ “Love. It’s a waste of time,” she says. “Fucking is good, but love? Love is only powerful in transience and we are not transient. So if you are wanting me to love you, this has to stop, because you’re delusional.” _

_ He doesn’t feel delusional, though he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. He’s sin, and he’s a monster—neither of which makes him particularly worthy of love. _

_ “It is better to tell you cruel honesties than sweet lies,” Asajj adds as she gets up from the bed and begins to dress. No, she won’t spend the day in his arms. She’ll go back to her own darkened rooms and sleep by herself. “We aren’t creatures built for love. I’d have thought Snoke would have told you that.” _

_ - _

He was made to love her. He decides this when his hands brush against her breast. There is something so understated, so underappreciated about the smoothness of her nipple before it pebbles and tightens. The skin there is as soft as her lips, and he licks at it before kissing along the top of her breasts, along her sternum to her throat and the sweet nectar that flows like a river beneath her skin. 

He licks again at the cuts that Snoke had given her. Already they are healing, and though he wants to taste her, will never tire of the taste of her blood, he will wait until there’s not so much as a minor indentation left of Snoke.  _ To bite another’s progeny—newly formed—without the progenitor’s permission… _

That has to be something he can leverage should Snoke return with councilmen at his back. Already he has violated the sanctity of Ben’s home, as his ties to Ben had been rendered null upon the creation of Ben’s own progeny.

Ben’s own progeny, who is drawing his lips to hers, his mind to hers. He can taste eternity on her tongue, but then again, he has always been able to. From the moment he first scented her in that lab when she was donating, he’d remembered what it was to feel alive. Perhaps that was what it was. There was no promise of heaven for the souls of the damned, but a memory of life, a hope for a future? 

And he has a future he cares about, suddenly. It is not errant boredom, fixation to fixation to fixation. But here’s Rey now. Rey, who loves him, who wants to fuck him even if he’s a degenerate who can’t stop himself from fucking his progeny. Surely other progenitors aren’t like this, don’t feel as though they can’t resist, can’t deny. Maybe it’s because she’s an Omega, but more likely it is because she’s Rey.

Rey, who is in love with him.

Rey, Rey, beautiful, incredible, perfect Rey who is biting his neck— _ again _ —and drinking him down.

“Ben—”

“Ben—I love—”

“Oh, Ben, oh—”

He isn’t surprised how fast he comes. One day, he will fuck her for hours before knotting her. He’ll piston his hips endlessly, make her breathless, make her scream and yell and dig her fingers into his back, dig her teeth into his collar bone. But she has been a vampire for less than a night and she loves him, even though he turned her without asking her, even though he never told her he loves her. So he knots her quickly and collapses on top of her, pins her to the bed.

“I love you,” he whispers to her and she smiles up at him. “I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

And she smirks.

“Yes, I seem to remember you being quite intoxicated by me,” she teases, and he kisses her, his tongue delving into her mouth for no reason other than that he wants to know what flavor the teasing brings to her smile.

-

“Will people think you’re horrible for doing this?” she asks him quietly. He’s coming in her again, and she wonders if it will always feel like this—positively soothing to have him fill her with his cum. The mere idea that it would be anyone other than him—doing this...the only word she can think of is that it’s repulsive. Her body tenses at the mere thought of it.  _ Does his cum taste different now that I’m a vampire?  _ she wonders. She’ll have to try it when he’s not locked inside her.

“Fucking my progeny?” Ben asks. He runs his nose along hers in what she thinks is him trying to soothe her. “Possibly. But I hope the fact that you’re an Omega will distract them.”

“It distracted Snoke,” Rey says, trying not to get hopeful. Snoke’s departure had been more sinister than not, even if he  _ had _ stopped calling Ben a degenerate. 

Ben hums in agreement. “It will distract a lot of them,” he says slowly. “Although how much will depend on Snoke.”

“Oh?”

“He’s...influential.”

Rey arches underneath him and he nuzzles at her neck. “I will be too,” she says. “I dare any of them to stop me from having what I want.”

The smile he gives her is tight and she knows that he’s thinking of all the things she doesn’t yet know: people, laws, agreements, whatever. But he only kisses her, and she thinks he might just be hoping she’s right. She tastes so much hope in that kiss, or maybe she can smell it in the air around them, or maybe it’s all in her mind, a side-effect of being too full of blood and cum. 

“I believe almost anything because you’re alive,” he whispers to her, stroking the line of her hair at the top of her neck. “You weren’t supposed to survive it. But you did. So anything’s possible.”

She kisses his forehead. “I’m not letting you go because a bunch of crusty vampires don’t want me to love you,” she says. “Hang the rules.”

He grins.

She loves his smile, how it softens his face. She traces the lines of it along the outside of his lips with the tips of her fingers. She wants to memorize how he looks right now in this brief moment of calm.

And then his phone buzzes.

He frowns as he grabs it, those beautiful lines of his smile fading as panic fills him.

“Shit.”

-

_ Your delivery is arriving shortly. Please be prepared to greet your delivery person at the door with a valid ID. _

He stares at the words. Vaguely, from the last time he did this, he remembers having to greet the person at the door. Vaguely, from the moments before Snoke had arrived, he remembers thinking he would wait to knot Rey again because he’d need to pick up the blood for her. It doesn’t matter now though. Now he’s knotted in her, his dick so deep in her, throbbing and twitching and gloriously deep in her and there’s  _ no _ way he’s going to be able to pull out and find his fucking ID.

He watches as the little delivery map shows a blue dot approaching his building.

“What’s wrong?” Rey asks him.

And that’s when the phone buzzes again in his hand.

_ Your delivery has arrived! _

Ben looks down at her, then back at his phone, then down at her again.

Then the phone starts to ring.

“Hello, I have your blood for you,” says a voice that’s too energetic to be a vampire. Probably a teenager with his luck. 

“Hi, can you leave it outside?” Ben grunts. Maybe the conversation will kill his boner; although then he’d probably have to murder this poor kid for making him lose his boner for Rey.

“No—sorry. That violates policy. You’ll need to come out.”

“I’m a bit indisposed,” Ben says.

“I need a valid ID as well,” the kid says. 

“I really can’t come to the door.”

Underneath him, Rey giggles. There’s a twinkle in her eye that means he’s unlikely to lose his erection anytime soon.

“Sir—I really can’t just leave the blood on your doorstep.”

“I don’t think you know how much I’ll tip you if you do,” Ben says.

“Sir, I’ll lose my job.”

“I’m literally balls deep in someone right now, do you really want me to come outside?”

There’s a long pause.

The longest pause.

Ben waits.

Good god, how long does this kid need to think this one over?

“Sir, it violates policy.” At least he sounds like he knows he’s about to be traumatized.  _ Probably fully aware that the only thing that’ll keep me ripping his fucking head off is that I’m balls deep in someone right now. _

Ben lets out a snarl and eases onto his knees. Rey sits up and wriggles a bit wrapping her legs around his hips, her arms around his neck. She’s laughing so hard she’s not making a noise which he supposes is the only thing that is keeping him from wanting to  _ murder _ right now.

He swings the door open and this fucking teenager is wincing and squinting, his eyes barely open, but Ben watches as they drop to Rey’s ass and then flick back up, his blood flushing into his face. 

“ID?” he squeaks.

“She’s less than a day old, do you really want to stand here with the door open for that long while she realizes that you’ve got fresher blood than is in those bags,” Ben growls and the boy nods in terror and places the styrofoam box of blood just inside Ben’s apartment door before sprinting away as fast as he can. Ben kicks the door shut and looks at Rey.

Rey who is still laughing so hard that she can’t make a noise at all. There’s blood streaming from her eyes in amusement. “You must love me,” she says.

“Eat your fucking vegetables,” he growls at her.

“Yes, daddy.” She grins before hooting with more delighted laughter as he rolls his eyes and sinks them both down to the floor with no grace at all, his ass connecting a little too hard with the wood beneath him. But he doesn’t care. He opens the styrofoam box and grabs the bag at the top, handing it to Rey. 

“Ordinarily, I’d put it in a glass for you,” he tells her. He rips it open carefully with his teeth as Rey rubs the blood from her cheeks. The moment the plastic opens, her awareness shifts. 

Maybe she’d been too distracted by the humor of it all to really smell the boy, or maybe he’d had the good sense to use a blocker while on the job. But the humor disappears from her face the moment the nondescript scent of B+ fills the room.

“Careful,” he says as she reaches for it. “You don’t want to spill.”

The sounds she makes isn’t human. He knows it all too well. It is the sound of a hungry vampire, ready to feed. 

Slowly, she sucks on the top of the plastic bag. And then, faster than lightning, the blood in the bag is gone. She has downed it so quickly, so needily.

Her scent changes as she drinks. It becomes thicker, headier, and if he weren’t already coming inside her…

He groans and twists and she’s underneath him now, her hand fumbling towards the styrofoam for another plastic bag of blood as he humps into her, willing his knot to go deeper, needing it to. God she smells unreal. She smells like she’s blooming, like he’s watching her grow stronger, more alive, and the only thing he can do is feed her and fuck her and let the night have them both.

She’s moaning underneath him, and arching, and B- is not his favorite flavor—not by a mile, but she seems content with it as she keeps drinking. “More,” she pants. “Ben—I—”

Oh, he’ll give her more. 

He’ll give her everything.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all, it's been a minute and i'm sorry. work sped up; i've been smash-banging out some fics for [the rffa exchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RFFA_for_one_is_both_and_both_are_one_in_love) (which drops tonight at midnight est!); i went on a trip.
> 
> hoping very much to have this one wrapped up in the next like 2-3 chapters. not putting that as a final chapter count tho bc i don't want to swing back around later to kinkshame my own lack of self-control. this fic exists as a lack of self control--why try to control it?
> 
> thank you all so much for your reviews and support on this fic. seriously--it means more than i can say <3 
> 
> in terms of content warnings for this chapter, see the paragraph below:
> 
> well i don't know why this one is harder to talk about than the mild necrophilia in chapter one, but there's some sexy consensual vampire biting of genetalia in this one. (what the fuck is going on in my head? i'm dragging you all to hell with me.) it's like...a good chunk of the sex scene basically from when rey's preparing to give him a beej through to the pov break. 
> 
> in other news, this chapter is mostly sex, but i figure y'all are here for that. Plot to come next chapter though so you've been warned well in advance.

Satiation.

Satiation at last attainable. She understands that now as she drinks down the third bag of blood. This is A Positive, she thinks she hears Ben say but he’s too lost in everything for her to really be sure he said it, for her to really be sure she heard it. Ben’s blood makes her feel alive, yes. Makes her feel need, makes her feel like she’s not starving. But this blood—human blood—

She starts to remember what it is to feel strong. 

Her body bubbles with it, sending her glowing, sending her spiraling. She needs more. She needs to keep drinking. Not for her life the way she had sucked at Ben’s neck in the dirt, but for  _ living. _

And then there’s Ben. He’s knotted in her again, pulsing and throbbing and gasping as he clings to her. He licks the dribblings of the bagged blood from her lips as he comes, from the corners of her mouth as his tongue delves into hers, twining with hers, gripping hers. She’d never noticed how strong his tongue was before. Had he been holding back? The posters on r/vampirefuckers seemed to think that they would. 

She wants him. She hadn’t realized she could want him more than she wanted him before, but now she feels like she has the energy to want him, to take as much as he’ll give her, to give as much as she can to him. 

So she rides him. Rides him and rides him in a way that might once have left her sore for days but now it feels like this is what she was born to do. The way he fills her, the way he thrills her. 

Light. 

That’s the only way she can keep thinking about it. She doesn’t have a pulse anymore. Her heart is stubbornly dead. Her stomach is distended with blood even more than it already had been, her bones and muscles are heavy, and yet when Ben’s thumb flicks at her clit, when his lips are at her nipples, or her throat, or her ears whispering words of wanting, she feels light. Light like she could float, light like she illuminates the room, that fizzling, popping, bubbling feeling of her body filled with blood sending her to heights she had never even known she could experience. 

“Does it always feel like this?” she asks him. She’s had five bags of blood now and at some point they’d put the leftovers in his refrigerator and returned to bed. He’s curled up behind her—the last time he’d fucked her, it had been from behind, his hands in her hair, on her hips, his lips kissing up and down her spine as he’d pounded into her, heeding and meeting every begged, “More,” that had fallen from her lips. One of his hands cups her breast, the other has snaked under her neck to lie on the bed in front of her and his cock…

It swells and pulses inside her. She wonders vaguely how he has enough cum to pump into her this endlessly. Surely it is a well that will dry at some point. 

“No,” he replies. “And yes. But mostly no. You’ll never be this full of blood again, not unless you gorge yourself, which is outlawed now if you want to drink blood fresh from the human.”

“Oh.” She can’t help but feel disappointed. Ben hears it and she feels his lips ghost across her neck. 

“It can be like this when you drink from another vampire,” he murmurs and almost at once she’s mollified. “It won’t last as long, but it’ll hit harder. You still get that...that almost floating feeling.”

She twists her head back and kisses a spot of skin just above his lip, next to his nose. “Then that’s all I need,” she whispers. “Because I have you.”

“You have me,” he replies, pulling her to his chest again. 

“Why don’t vampires just order a ton of blood from the blood banks?” Rey asks.

“Because it’s expensive. Supply and demand,” Ben says at once. “And because this is probably the only time your body won’t protest at how much blood you’re drinking.”

“Oh?” 

She feels him nodding against her neck. “The sheer amount of energy it takes for you to transform—and to transform after your body has stopped creating and processing its own energy. You’ll never need to refuel quite this much ever again—not unless the council locks you in a coffin for a thousand years.”

“Do they do that?” she asks nervously. 

“Sometimes. For egregious sins.”

“Like fucking your progeny?” The question is quiet because she’d needed to ask it. Snoke had made it sound like he could, well, she didn’t know. Break them. Get Ben in trouble. She doesn’t know. She can’t know. 

“No,” Ben tells her gently. “The worst that would happen for that is a slap on the wrist.”

“What is an egregious sin, then?” Rey asks.

“Killing another’s progeny,” he replies. “Someone outside of your line.”

“But it’s ok to kill in your line?”

“It’s seen as cleaning house. Getting rid of a bad egg that might destroy all we’ve become,” he says dryly. He presses a kiss to her shoulder and she feels his lips curve into a smile. “He can’t touch me,” he whispers. “I’m out of his progeny line because I made you. He can’t touch either of us.”

“He made it sound—”

“He’s pulling at threads,” Ben tells her. “He hates losing control of his own. None of his progeny have ever made progeny. He doesn’t let them. He’s killed the ones who’d talked back about it, made examples of them.”

“That’s horrible,” Rey says, and Ben shrugs. 

“Maybe.” He doesn’t sound like he fully agrees.

“How is that not controlling? How is that not horrifyingly…” she struggles for words.

“Because young vampires make bad mistakes,” he says. “It’s not abnormal for a vampire to be culled within their first decade, or even their first century. If they run the risk of causing danger for all of us, better to rid ourselves of them sooner rather than—” and he stops talking, his face getting distant.

“Ben?” she asks.

He doesn’t respond though. She knows the look of someone who had their mind drag up something they haven’t thought about in a long time. How old is he? She’d never asked. It had felt like a rude question before, but now it doesn’t, so she asks it.

It jogs him out of his reverie. “Fifteen hundred years. Give or take. After a certain point you stop paying attention.” He pauses again, doing math. “I was born in 438.”

Rey blinks at him. She blinks at him a lot. “Well, you’ve aged nicely,” she tells him and his lips brush along her chin. 

“It’ll be ok,” he promises her. “We’ll be safe. We’ll be happy. It’ll be ok.” But she can’t get past the feeling that it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than her.

-

The remainder of Rey’s bloodlust passes in a blur. He has long ago given up what caring he had once had about heaven and hell, but this—this is bliss. The wetness of her cunt, the way it grips him when he swells inside it, how coming inside her, knotting her, empties him of all thought and emotion and leaves him blank. Just blank. Nothing to worry about beyond their bed, nothing to fear from anyone because the world doesn’t exist except for them. 

What nagging worry stands a chance when her blood is on his lips? What could possibly matter? The only thing that matters is the way she tastes, the way she makes him feel, the way she kisses her way down his chest and sucks him into her mouth, sucking and licking. She locks eyes with him before she scrapes her teeth for just a moment across his skin and his breath catches in his throat as he sees blood there, welling in the tiniest cut she’d been able make along his shaft. 

When he’d been a boy, a human, an idiot, he’d heard that sometimes a cock would be sucked, and he’d been so afraid of being bitten. What if she didn’t stop, ate him down like a carrot and he’d be cockless for the rest of his life. But no, Rey wouldn’t do that to him. He’d been a fool to be afraid of that—or at least to carry the memory of that fear into his vampire life, because it’s hypnotizing, watching as she licks it down, drinks it down, as her hand pumps at the base of his shaft, teasing at the beginnings of his knot. “You taste so good,” she tells him when she comes up for air. 

He runs his hands through her hair and she groans and her mouth is on him again, sucking at the base of his knot now and god—god her lips on his knot he’s so close to coming just from that—let alone her looking up at him, her mouth full of his dick and a devious expression flooding her eyes until she has relaxed her throat and sucked him all the way down, her teeth scraping deliciously against his knot before her lips—her lips—

He knots her mouth. 

He can’t breathe or see or think straight. He can’t do anything at all except feel what it is that her lips are doing on his knot, the way he swells and expels inside her, the way she groans as her mouth and throat flood with his blood and cum, undoubtedly the way she wanted. 

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he tells her when he can manage words. She hums and his eyes roll into the back of his head from the vibrations that are thrumming all round his cock. 

And it is Alphas that are supposed to be the powerful ones? What’s strength when she could end him just like this, and he’d thank her for it. 

She doesn’t seem to complain at all as they wait for his knot to recede. She keeps brushing her teeth across his sensitive skin just as it has finished healing so she can keep drinking blood from his dick. He can’t tell if it is taking longer than usual. There’s something about the feeling of her teeth that makes him feel like it’ll never stop.

But it does. Eventually he pulls himself from her, slick with her saliva and helps her up the bed to rest her head on his chest. 

“A good way to go,” she says.

“Hm?”

“If I’m going to be the death of you.”

“You have no idea.”

“No, I think  _ you _ have no idea,” she tells him and he catches her hint. 

It’s the best view in the world—looking up and seeing her there, the curve of her bloodfilled stomach, the swelling undersides of her breasts and when he inhales the sharp, perfect, delightful smell of her overripe cunt. His tongue flicks out. She tastes better now than she had when she’d been alive. Richer, headier. She’d tasted good before, but it was human in an unavoidable way. She doesn’t taste human now. She tastes like nectar, and blood, and arousal, and all his future just above him. 

She drips onto his chin, and he welcomes it, the smooth essence of her that will soak into his skin because he—he has more pressing matters to attend to. 

He kisses her lips—the lightest of kisses, the most teasing of kisses. On either side of his head, her thighs tighten in nervous anticipation and he trails his fingers along her slit, through her legs to circle at the puckering hole in her rear. “Oh,” he hears her gasp and he smiles into her skin.

“Do you like that?” he asks, and he watches as goosebumps break out across the skin of her thighs. 

“Yes,” she says, and he smiles, drawing more of her slick behind to her asshole, circling it lightly, teasingly. 

“Do you want me to fuck your ass sometime, my love?”

He doesn’t wait for her to respond. He sucks her clit between his lips, hard, and presses his fingers against—against but not into—her ass and she’s crying out “Oh—oh—oh—” because that’s all she’s capable of at the moment. He can feel her pulsing between his lips as she drips more onto his chin.

_ Messy girl,  _ he thinks as he releases her clit and licks, long and hot, against her cleft.  _ Delicious, messy, wonderful girl.  _

As light as the kisses, he lets his teeth drop into her flesh for just the lightest of moments. And then his mouth is flooding with her blood—her blood and slick and this is divinity. This is heaven. Heaven isn’t an astral plane full of angels, it’s Rey’s blood and cum on his tongue, filling his heart and mind with an elation he didn’t even know was possible. More.  _ More _ . He wants more.

He thrusts his tongue up into her, his mouth wide open, blood and slick and perfection and yes—yes, she’s coming he can feel the way she’s gripping his tongue, can hear her crying out even as her thighs tighten around his ears, as if she’s trying to pull away from him, but he grabs her hips and pulls her back down. No. No this doesn’t end. This never ends. He hadn’t carried her through the darkness, buried them both in the dirt, for ecstasy in eternity to end so soon.

He is more than halfway to knotted by the time he lets her pull herself way, her cunt throbbing and sensitive and still dripping the most delicious concoction onto his head. 

She collapses onto the bed next to him, burying herself into his chest, her hand reaching down and gripping his needy cock as they both try so desperately to recover.

“A good way to go,” he whispers to her as they both drift off to sleep.

-

It can’t last though. Nothing good ever does. 

Rey has learned that how many times in her life? 

Ben’s phone buzzes insistently for several minutes on end. Whoever is calling him is not taking voicemail as a substantial substitute and eventually he drags himself from the bed to answer it.

She watches him in the darkness, his muscles tightening in tension as he hears whatever it is the caller has to say. 

He turns away from her and she knows it’s to hide the grim expression on his face.

“All right,” he says after a few minutes and hangs up without another word. Then he goes into the bathroom. She hears the shower running and decides it’s time to shower too. The last time she had it had been to get the dirt from the grave off her. She follows Ben into the bathroom and joins him in the shower stall, wrapping her arms around his waist, pressing her chest to his back.

“It’ll be ok,” she tells him.

“Yeah,” he says, and he sounds like he desperately needs to believe it.

“Are you in trouble?”

He nods. Then, “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a formal summons—for both of us.”

“When?”

“The new moon.”

“Which is…”

“In four days.”

“That’s time,” she says, trying not to let the way her stomach had jolted in worry permeate her voice in any way. 

“Not enough,” Ben sighs, and he turns in her arms, pulling her close, burying his face in her hair. “Not nearly enough.”


	6. Chapter 6

They raid Rey’s closet. 

It’s the only thing that makes sense, really. Ben had suggested ordering clothes online, but almost everything they’d looked at wouldn’t be delivered in time because Ben was  _ ridiculous _ and was not letting her order a “this looks expensive but is actually cheap” dress on Amazon. 

“It’s not like I have anything nicer,” she tells him as they unlock the front door to Rey’s old apartment. 

“No, but at least it’s already yours. There’s honor in that.”

“Honor?” she scoffs. 

“You aren’t going to be putting on airs.”

“And that…” she can’t even remember the brand, “that strappy number you wanted to get me.”

“That was for me,” he says cheekily and she gives him a look that elicits a crooked smile.

He unlocks the door—her keys had fallen from her lifeless body as he’d carried her to the cemetery, but he still has the one she’d slipped him. 

She freezes in the door of the apartment as the scent washes over her. It’s rich, and mouthwatering. It reminds her of salt-water taffy, of spring days, of the exact right amount of sunshine, and—and—

“Is that me?” she asks him quietly. 

And his arms slips around her waist. “Yes,” he says. “That’s you.”

“Do I still smell like this?” she asks him. She hasn’t been able to scent herself. The tangy smell of her fluids on the bed—yes. But that’s the way it was even when she was alive, something other than what her body produces when relaxed, when unstimulated.

“Yes,” he says again and he presses his lips to her neck. “Better, though. Because I’m less worried about accidentally sucking you dry.”

“You’re always welcome to suck me dry.”

He smiles into her neck and they stand like that for a few minutes.

“I should tell Finn,” she says at last. She hasn’t really thought about Finn since it happened. Her mind has been full of Ben, and fucking, and needing, and thirsting, and more Ben. And sure, she’s gone days without texting Finn before. But not many, and this is the sort of thing he’d worry about.

Ben’s arms tighten around her as he stiffens. “We’ll have to put a hold on that,” he says.

“Am I not allowed to?” she demands sharply. “Is that some sort of rule?”

“You are,” he replies, clearly trying to sound as gentle as he can. 

“But?”

“But—do you remember how you reacted to the donated blood we bought?” 

Rey swallows. Her mouth waters at the mere memory of it.

“You think I’ll lose control?”

“I think you don’t want to have to live through the risk of it.”

“I’m not going to kill Finn.” Rey’s eyes are stinging with tears—blood. She cries blood now. 

“And I didn’t want to kill you,” Ben points out. “Do you remember?”

She looks away. “Can I call him at least? If I can’t see him?”

“Just wait a year,” Ben says handing her his phone. “And you can call him as much as you want.”

“I should figure out what to do about my own phone,” she says as she thumbs in Finn’s number. It had probably gotten crushed by the bus. 

“Once we’ve met with the council,” Ben says edgily and he goes to her closet and begins pulling out dresses he’s liked her in, while Rey sits down on her bed and presses her ear to his phone.

It goes to voicemail.

Of course it does. Finn doesn’t pick up random numbers. He does check voicemails though to make sure it’s spam before he blocks the number. Her throat tightens when she hears the “Hey, this is Finn. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

“Hi,” she says, her throat thick. “Hi, it’s me. I’m ok. It’s—well—it’s complicated. My phone’s busted at the moment and so I’m on Ben’s and—and—” She tries so hard not to be aware of Ben in her closet, pretending not to be listening closely. She’s sure he can hear the blood close to breaking loose from her eyes. “And give me a call if you can. It’ll be ok. It’s just—stuff’s different now. I love you.” 

She hangs up quickly and gets to her feet. She doesn’t want to look at her old life, suddenly. She doesn’t want to smell herself, or be in the bed that had been a haven for her. Ben can pick whatever dress he wants her to.

And his phone is buzzing in her hand and that’s Finn’s phone number.

“Hi,” she says, and the blood starts flowing down her face before Finn’s even said more than one word.

-

What does he do?

He can hear her crying on the phone in the other room.

He wants to hold her, wants to kiss her, wants to promise her it will be all right, that this is far better than her actually being dead. That in a year, she can—probably—see Finn as much as she wants. He even considers letting her try now for a moment before the thought  _ this is why you’re not supposed to fuck your progeny  _ crosses his mind and his hand tightens in the cute blue cotton dress that he’s holding.  _ You have to be able to say no to her. That this is the best for her. _

As a progenitor, the thought makes sense. She has to learn what she is, how she is, who she is; as a lover it makes him feel sick.

_ Let her cry.  _ That’s what human parents do for babies, right? Let them cry until they sleep? This was never going to be easy for her. She loves so deeply.

Ben picks a green dress at random. He thinks she’s worn it before. He thinks he remembers peeling it off her at some point. Then he waits. He waits for the sounds of Rey’s sobs to abate, waits for silence to fill her apartment quite as much as the memory of her human scent. 

Quietly, she creeps into her bedroom again. There are bloodstains on her face and she makes a beeline for him, pressing her face into his chest and he pulls her into his arms.

“He knows now,” he whispers.

“Yeah.”

“And it’s worlds better than you being dead.” He needs to hear her agree. She doesn’t say a word but she nods vigorously against his chest and that’s enough. 

“I love you,” he tells her. “And you did the brave thing. The right thing.”

“He wants to see me in person,” Rey whispers. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ben says.

“I told him that and he told me to tell you you can go fuck yourself.” Ben snorts. Somehow he’s not surprised. “And also to thank you for…” she swallows. “For saving me.” That’s better.

He takes the phone from her hand. She’s already added Finn to his contact list (sparse, and he really should block Snoke’s number just in case) and he sends Finn a text. 

_ We’ll be in touch next week about meeting up. There’s a thing we have to do between now and then, and whether or not we’re able to arrange anything will depend on it. I’m not trying to keep her away from you because I’m trying to control her. I’m trying to protect both of you. _

He resists adding that he’s over one thousand, six hundred years old and he knows what he’s talking about because he doesn’t think that will land with Finn.

The response comes through thirty seconds later.

_ Yeah I get it.  _

And that’s it. Which is probably the best he can hope for. Somehow he suspects that Finn has put his face on a dartboard and is staring at it confusedly, unsure if he wants to send projectiles at it or if he’s grateful his friend is still alive in some capacity.

“This ok?” he asks her, pointing to the green dress.

She nods without really looking at it. 

Then they go, locking the door carefully behind them.

-

It’s not until they’re getting out of Ben’s car on the new moon and stepping into a tall building with thick dark glass windows that Ben really notices how strange it is to see a vampire wearing green.

Black and brown and deep blues—all the time. He doesn’t even really think it’s that everyone’s committed to the aesthetic so much as in the darkness, all colors look closer to black than their true hue. Even the reds that they wear—definitely for the aesthetic—look more like burgundy, more like pooling blood than the vivid lipsticks he sees in ads. 

The inside of the building is bright with the same sorts of energy efficient lightbulbs that populate the clinic he works at. It’s bright, and businesslike, and unless you know it, there is no way to tell from the lobby that this is where the local council has made its home. It could be any office in the city. Ben keeps his hand on the small of Rey’s back as he leads her to a desk. 

“Name?” the attendant asks. 

“Solo,” Ben says and the attendant looks at his computer screen.

“Waiting room nine,” he says and nods towards the elevator. 

Everything is quiet. Too quiet. He doesn’t know what to say to Rey. He doesn’t want to lie to her—in either direction. It might be fine. It might, for all he knows, just be a regular  _ please introduce and register your progeny,  _ but Snoke would want to fuck with his head; or it could be much much worse.

So instead he just keeps his hand at the small of her back—though whether it’s to calm her or himself he doesn’t know.

_ If they try and take her away from me… _

But no. No, he won’t let them. He’ll kill them all before he lets that happen, before he lets any of them touch her. He’d sooner walk into the sun than see her gone from this world. His own desperation and determination have made her what she is now, and there is no greater power in the world than that. 

“We’ll be fine, so long as we have each other,” Rey whispers and he looks at her. She’s watching him sidelong, her eyebrows knit together in concern. 

He takes her hand and brings it to his lips and can’t find a single word to say.

The elevator opens and he takes her by the arm, leads her out into the waiting room on the ninth floor. There’s a fridge in the corner that has some bottled blood and he finds an O Negative for himself and an AB Positive for Rey. That was the one she’d said she liked best.  _ What blood type is Finn? _

If he’s ever donated blood, Ben should be able to look him up in the registry.  _ Please don’t be AB positive,  _ he thinks as he pops the bottles into the microwave next to the refrigerator. If they make it that far, he doesn’t want Rey to experience wanting to suck her best friend dry. She’d hate that, hate herself for that. 

“Thanks,” she says quietly, accepting the bottle he’d brought her and taking a sip. She sighs. 

“That’s the same.”

“What’s the same?”

“Eating still calms my nerves.”

He sits down next to her and she nudges her knee against his. He drinks too, though it doesn’t calm his nerves at all.  _ Probably because I know what might be coming. _

He’s halfway through his bottle by the time the door into the council chamber opens and a woman emerges.

“Ben,” she smiles, her lips curling catlike.

If he needed to breathe, he’d be sighing heavily. “Asajj. Are you on the council now?”

She’d been older than days when he’d been young, when he’d wanted her love because he’d wanted anyone’s love. 

“Junior member,” she says.

“Who’d you have to kill to get that job?” It’s meant to be a sarcastic joke, but her lips get more catlike as she says, 

“Savage.”

“Ah.”

Well, that would be...something. 

“Won’t you and your…” and her eyes flick to Rey, “progeny come this way.”

Rey gets to her feet and holds out a hand to Asajj. “Rey Johnson.”

“Asajj Ventress,” she says, shaking Rey’s hand with a firm grip. 

The council chamber, unlike the rest of the building, is dimly lit. There are no electric lights, only candles that are standing in tall candelabras throughout the room. Velvet and leather chairs are scattered throughout, because if there’s one thing that is true of vampires it’s that they might agree to work together, but there is no way to force any of them to sit in a row or circle if they don’t want to. 

Asajj takes a seat in a chair near a wall, which doesn’t surprise Ben at all. She’d been an assassin in a past life, and always preferred to watch from the shadows. He recognizes many of the faces in the room, but his eyes land on Snoke, standing in the center of the room, his eyes staring hungrily at Rey. 

_ You can’t have her. If you touch a hair on her head I swear I’ll cut you in half. _

“Ben Solo.” The voice sends a chill up his spine and Ben turns, his eyes going to a great plush armchair at the back of the room.

They’d brought Palpatine to the council chamber.

-

The speaker is the oldest looking vampire Rey has ever seen. Most vampires she’s encountered—Snoke being the sole exception—have all looked decently young. Even Asajj had looked like she couldn’t be older than thirty-five. But this vampire looks ancient.

“And who is this?”

“Rey Johnson,” Asajj says from the shadows. 

“And how is it that Ms. Johnson came to turn?” the speaker asks.

Ben’s voice is quiet when he replies, as though he’s trying to make them all pay closer attention to him. “She was hit by a bus last week. I brought her to a grave and turned her the same night while her body was still warm.”

“And did you speak with your progenitor about turning a progeny?” the old vampire asks.

“There wasn’t time.”

“And yet you called Armitage Hux to help bury you in the open grave.”

Rey’s heart is in her throat. She doesn’t like the bend of these questions—not at all. She doesn’t like the way that this councilman is clearly setting Ben up for...she doesn’t know. Suddenly she feels young, and small, and afraid in a way she hasn’t felt since she was a child.

“I did.” Ben states it firmly, his teeth gritted and Rey’s stomach swoops with nerves. She wishes she were holding his hand, that his hand was on the small of her back again. 

“Ben Solo, your progenitor has formally requested that the council realign your progeny to him. He has named you a thief of bloodline, and a degenerate since he has found you coupling with your progeny, which is a violation of common law. How do you—”

“No.”

But it’s not Ben that says it. The words had slipped out of Rey’s mouth and for the first time, the eyes of the entire room are on her, staring at her. She sees bared teeth, flared nostrils, and out of the corner of her eye, Ben’s head tilts ever so slightly to look at her out of the corner of her eyes. She understands why his hand isn’t reaching to hold hers, but her own fingers twitch slightly for want of his as the weight of everyone’s attention lands on her.

“No?” asks the old vampire.

“No,” she says. 

“I would teach your progeny respect and order were I you, Solo,” says a man with black and red tattoos on his face. He’s wearing what looks like a crown of horns as well.

“Why no?” asks the old vampire. “This is a solution that makes the most sense for you, I would imagine. If you wish to continue your current relations with your current progenitor, I mean. There isn’t a vampire in the world that would support such a liaison. This way you can continue as you have been.”

“I don’t want Snoke as my progenitor.” He hurt Ben. She doesn’t say the last part out loud, though. She gets the sense that this council won’t care about that at all. They probably don’t care when progenitors discipline their progeny, which technically she supposes was what Snoke was trying to do. “And I’m not a thing to be passed back and forth. I’m my own person. I’m not owned.”

“Not owned,” the old vampire says. “Raised. Reared. And you aren’t that either, if you do not yet know the value and importance of silence until spoken to.”

“Silence even when spoken about?” Rey flares. “Is there a formal age of majority?”

“We aren’t humans,” says a small woman wearing large bottle-cap glasses that magnify her eyes and make her look almost like a bug. “Majority and maturity aren’t the same thing. Self-control is the value, when all our impulses tell us to hunt, to fight, to kill.”

“And I have plenty of self-control,” Rey replies hotly, not knowing if it’s true but also not knowing that it’s a lie. 

“As demonstrated so evidently by your control over your emotions and your capacity to remain silent until your voice is called for,” says the tattooed man.

“So long as your rules treat me as an object, they aren’t good rules. I’m not an object.”

“No, you are a child,” cuts in the old man. “A vampire who is less than a week old, who doesn’t know her power, her strength, her hunger, or the tradition she has found herself reborn into. You must learn all of this, and your progenitor is ill-fit to teach you.” He turns his attention to Ben. “If she doesn’t get a grip on her Alpha instincts and soon, she’ll find herself culled even independently of the illicitness of her rebirth. She must learn to control the fight in her, or else she will be a risk to us all.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be hard,” Rey says, rolling her eyes. “Because I’m  _ not _ an Alpha.”

She watches as every vampire in the room’s nostrils flare, as once again, their attention is undivided upon her.

And then, the little old woman in the bottlecap glasses hisses out,

“Omega.”

And everything changes.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we are at the end folks. thanks for reading and i hope you've enjoyed! this was an adventure for me since i almost never post as i write but here we are!
> 
> thanks once again to ever-so-reylo for beta-reading this <3 
> 
> also--specifically for this chapter--@ any lawyers: i'm so sorry did i even try? probably not.
> 
> don't think too hard. vampires. they're vampires.

_ “It can’t be love,” Asajj had told him before she had told him to stop coming over to fuck her. “Love doesn't exist between our kind. There’s want, and obsession, and the delirium of attraction. But love? Love doesn’t exist because altruism doesn’t exist. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll accept your transition into what you are. Stop kicking and screaming.” _

_ His progenitor had echoed the sentiment. “It is a human delusion, love. That’s where the myth of the Omega comes from. That we can love, that we can be more than lust. That lust can turn into love. Love is more mythical than whichever god the humans are praying to today is. It’s chasing a shadow in the middle of the night. Don’t trouble yourself with it. Learn loyalty. Learn the bond of the Progeny. But put this dream of love out of your mind.” _

_ And he had tried to. He really had. And he’d thought he’d succeeded. _

_ He’d thought he’d succeeded until he’d met Rey. _

_ - _

Ben’s hand closes around Rey’s arm and jerks her to his side, his eyes on Maz Kanata. 

Realistically, he’d known that they would all have to learn that Rey was an Omega. In fact, he thought they’d already known. Surely Snoke would have told them.

But it’s scary, the way they’re all staring at her hungrily—as though she’s human and ripe for feeding. It frightens him.

He’s not used to being frightened.

“Are you saying you didn’t know?” he asks quietly, his gaze not breaking away from Maz.

Whether Maz is older than Palpatine, he doesn’t know. He learned a long time ago that apparent age and actual age have nothing in common, and that the only thing that a vampire’s age  _ actually _ grants them is the ability to withstand their thirst for longer. Maturity, wisdom...Well, Asajj is only a century or so older than he is, but she’s on the council. But Maz has always struck him as older than old. There’s a sort of ancient wisdom to her eyes. And he doesn’t know her at all, but right now, the curiosity rather than hunger in her eyes is comforting.

She gets to her feet slowly and crosses the room and Rey stares at her, all defiance and bravery.  _ Don’t get any closer,  _ her gaze seems to say. 

“It’s all right, child,” Maz says gently. “I won’t touch you.”

Rey relaxes but Ben doesn’t. Rey doesn’t know that  _ I  _ doesn’t mean  _ we.  _ She doesn’t know that this doesn’t mean she’s out of danger.

“No,” Palpatine says slowly and for the first time his gaze lands on Snoke. “No, we weren’t informed that you had managed to turn an Omega. Just that you’d turned a progeny without your progenitor’s consent, and that you’ve been pleasuring yourself with her like a youth.”

Maz is circling them, her dark eyes behind their glasses flitting over Rey’s face, her arms, her legs, her hips beneath the flaring green fabric of her skirt. 

“How?” she asks quietly. “How did you turn her?”

And Ben swallows. 

-

_ Rey makes noises in her sleep. _

_ Not always. And not always the same. _

_ But she does all the same. _

_ Little grunts—reactions to dreams. Or snores when she’s lying on her side.  _

_ When it tickles his skin, her breath is warm and it smells like everything he’s never known he needed. _

_ He never wants to let her go. _

_ For the first time since he was twenty-three and still human, he wishes he were alive. _

_ - _

“Why does that matter?” Snoke demands angrily. “How is that relevant to the charge at hand?”

“Because none of our laws have ever been designed around the existence of an Omega,” Maz says calmly, casting a glance at the old vampire who still is seated in his chair, watching them. She locks eyes with him as she continues. “Had he made a beta without your permission, the procedure of transference would be different than if he’d made an Alpha. I don’t know how she was made, therefore I don’t know what ritual we  _ could _ perform.”

“Surely it can’t be that different than if he’d made an Alpha or a Beta,” Snoke scoffs, but he looks more than a little nervous as he, too, looks at the old man.

Rey glances at Ben. He is also watching the old one. His grip around her arm is still vicelike—tighter than ever he’d held her before. If she had a pulse, her arm would likely be tingling from its restriction. 

“It would be different procedurally,” the old man says at last. “Not intensely so. Maz—what are you getting at?”

“That I have tried in my long years to make five Omegas. Five humans I thought would make good Vampires, who trusted their lives to me. Five corpses by the time I was dug out of the dirt.” She turns to Ben. “You’ve never made a progeny before. And yet on your first try, here stands the only Omega I’ve ever seen—healthy, and strong. So how did you do it? Spare no detail.”

He doesn’t.

Rey would flush if she could at some of his descriptions—about how high he’d felt on her blood as he’d fucked her in the dirt, about how she’d died on her own, he hadn’t killed her, about how she’d woken in her bloodlust while he’d already been inside her. Nostrils are still flared in the room, still scenting her, but now she feels as though the eyes can see right through her dress.

She doesn’t know that she cares.

Ben has brought her back to a new life. Not Snoke. Not  _ any _ of them. 

“Interesting,” the old one says when he finishes. “Interesting. You are suggesting that verdict to this claim should be different based on her turning?”

“I think it would be wrong of us to treat this as anything short of an outstanding situation,” Maz says. “I think we must also think of the precedent we are setting.”

“That Omegas might be given special status because they were  _ fucked _ into being?” spits out the old man.

“Sheev, you are mincing my words,” Maz says, sounding so very tired. “For all we know, the fucking had nothing to do with her survival—though I suspect it did,” she adds looking between Ben and Rey. Rey wishes Ben’s arms were around her. She’d feel safer if they were. But somehow she thinks that would only rile the council against them. She imagines that’s why Ben is only grabbing her arm, and not pulling her closer to him, into him. “It may not be the only thing. Another attempted creation of this sort may still yield more corpses for all we know. But you cannot deny that we must think of the precedent that—”

“We cannot make a decision based on a potential future state that we do not know will come to pass,” Sheev barks out. “We can only look at right now.”

“And right now,” Rey hears herself say, “I am an Omega, who was turned by this Alpha, and I am  _ not _ anyone’s property. That’s all progeny are, right?”

“The relationship between progenitor and progeny is far more complicated—” Ben begins, clearly trying to rein her in but Rey rounds on him.

“And yet Snoke burst into your apartment and claimed ownership of your actions and of  _ me _ . I’m not a child. I know I have plenty to learn, but I’m not a helpless baby who needs protecting from a world that’s too big for me. I need to learn, but I am a fully grown adult and—”

But Sheev laughs. “As with a human teenager, your assertions that you are an adult are little more than a minor amusement,” he says.

“And what about the fact that I am not a piece of property? If I am going to be the  _ precedent _ of what an Omega is, I’d rather have anyone else who gets turned and is like me not be trapped in a system where they cannot be their own person, can’t act upon their feelings, or—or—” she fumbles for words. “I don’t want Omegas to be stuck the way all of you are, bound by laws that strip you of your own personhood.”

“To protect us and ours from the world at large,” Sheev snarls, clearly angry.

“And yet the world is changing,” Maz says. “We don’t live in the darkness anymore. Maybe that’s the Omega’s lot…” and she pauses. “Especially considering if the legends are true and they can birth their own children.” Rey’s stomach does another anxious turn.  _ No—I still don’t want— _ “What becomes of the children? Would that not break the progenitor chain to begin with? We don’t  _ know _ . We can’t know. We won’t know for a long while yet. And I don’t think we will ever find out in truth if you strip her away from her current progenitor for reasons that don’t apply to what she is. That, to me, is a misapplication of our laws. And we’d be failing anyone who lives by them, in misapplying them here.”

-

_ Rey was six the first time she sat in a courtroom, watching as a judge tried to work out what to do with her. She had an uncle—a distant uncle—who didn’t want custody; and a step-cousin who said they weren’t actually related. Where were her parents? Who would protect her? _

_ They didn’t in the end—protect her. _

_ They said they were going to, but no one did. And the judge was trying, she could tell. But she even as young as she was she knew that he had no idea what to do with her.  _

_ She wished someone cared enough about her. But even her parents hadn’t—who would? _

-

He should have known that Snoke wouldn’t stay silent for long.

“Ben Solo still defied the direct orders of his progenitor and broke his progeny chain.” 

“And you lied to the council, because you knew she was an Omega and didn’t tell them. I think you were hoping they’d do your dirty work for you.” 

The words fly from his lips and it takes him a second to realize he said them.  _ Free. I’m free.  _ He doesn’t feel compelled to show nothing but deference, to keep his frustrations and attacks locked in his own head. He can say whatever he wants.

And he watches the shock on Snoke’s face.

He’s never had a progeny turn on him, because he never let his progenies turn anyone. 

He lets go of Rey and wraps his arm around her waist. He doesn’t care what the council thinks of this move anymore. All he can think of right now is that he’s chosen her over Snoke, and it hasn’t even been a choice. It has never been a choice.

He loves her. He loves her with all that remains if his dead and twisted heart.

And Snoke doesn’t believe in love. And even if he did, he has never loved Ben.

He looks at Palpatine. “Which is worse—disobeying your progenitor or lying to the council during a formal proceeding?”

Palpatine’s gaze shifts to Snoke who, suddenly, looks nervous.

“We will speak after this is adjourned.” His voice is icy. His gaze returns to Ben. “We will monitor your case,” he says. “In the event that you are found to be substandard in teaching her control because of your...desires for her, our action will be swift. That is a law we hold regardless of designation. In the meanwhile,” he glances at Maz, “We will discuss what the future may hold in light of the information you have provided.”

“I will happily monitor the case,” Maz says.

“I’m sure you will,” Palpatine mutters. He waves his hand and Ben feels like a weight has been lifted. 

“Is that it?” Rey asks.

“For now. Don’t question it, young one. Or I will change my mind.”

“I just—” Rey cuts herself off though as Ben pinches her. 

Maz snorts. “Go on, then. I’ll be in touch soon.”

Ben nods and pulls Rey away.

As he leaves the council room, his eyes land on Asajj. Her expression is unreadable, but for a moment, he almost thinks he sees her smile.

“I thought they’d have at least voted,” Rey mumbles as they get in the elevator, but Ben waits until they are back in his car to reply.

“If Palpatine’s there, then the democratic nature of the council evaporates pretty fast.”

“Palpatine?” Rey asks before he sees recognition flash in her eyes as he adjusts his mirrors. “Sheev.”

“Yeah. Him. He’s one of the oldest of us. I thought we were fucked because he and Snoke have been friendly in the past.”

“But we weren’t fucked,” Rey smiles quietly and she reaches for his hand as he turns the car on. 

“No,” he says. “No, we weren’t.” And he lifts her hand to his lips and presses a kiss to it before throwing the car into reverse and driving them off into the night.

-

_ There’s something about being inside her that makes him wish he wouldn’t live forever. It feels melodramatic, but this— _

_ This is something he didn’t think was possible, feeling this good, feeling this  _ whole _ just from another living being. Why is life so frail? Why does she have to age, and die? Why can’t she be with him forever? _

_ It’s cruel—that she has O Negative blood and wouldn’t survive the turn. It means he can’t even ask her if she’d maybe be interested in it—in him. And she probably doesn’t want to entertain the conversation of being together—long term— because what is life with a vampire, anyway? _

_ He buries his face in her neck, her pulse beating through her skin, just under his lips as he thrusts into her. Her heart is hammering in her chest and oh, how delicious she would be. Better than sex on his tongue, he knows that. But if he did it, he wouldn’t stop, and those little moans and gasps would fade away and then he’d never have her again.  _

_ He wishes he had control. _

_ He only has control for her. _

I don’t really know what love is, I don’t know if I can love, but I think I might love you,  _ he thinks before he shoves the thought away. Her hands are gripping his ass, pulling his hips into hers as though she wants her skin and his to become one. _

_ When they’re done, she lies with her head on his chest. “It’s strange that I can’t feel your heart beating,” she says. “I’m getting used to it though.” _

_ Getting used to it. This is still new, still early, still young. Just like her.  _

_ She makes him feel young again. Makes him feel alive, human, and it’s only when his alarm goes off an hour before sunrise so that he can slink back to his own dark apartment that the escapism fades and it’s back to reality. _

_ Back to a reality where she’ll grow old and he won’t; where she’ll die and he’ll live on forever, clutching the ghost of her memory to his chest and wondering if he’ll ever care again about anyone half as much as he’s cared about her. _

_ - _

The relief really doesn’t hit her until Ben’s inside her, knotted and pulling her to his chest after he’s fucked her from behind. She wonders if it’s his cum, if it will always soothe her, or if it’s just that she’s in his arms, and nothing’s going to take them from one another. 

If Snoke had failed and the council wasn’t acting on his complaints...well, maybe one day down the line things will change, but right now? Right now she’s in Ben’s arms and he’s rubbing his face in her hair as his orgasm continues.

How can she worry when Ben’s arms are around her? How can she worry when they’re together, and unharmed, and nothing is tearing them from one another, not life, not death, not the forces of the world around them? 

“What happens next?” she asks him when his knot begins to loosen. 

“Whatever we want,” he says, and his arms tighten around her and his lips move to her neck. “Within reason. I don’t want their attention on us ever again.”

“Somehow I think that’s unlikely,” Rey sighs and she rolls around so that her chest is flush to his, so that her face is also buried in his neck. “But apart from being a target, we’ll try.”

“We’ll try,” he agrees. “And soon we won’t have to anymore. Soon it’ll just be normal.”

And she grins. It feels hard to imagine it—normal and being a vampire. But she can’t imagine normal without his arms around her, so maybe she’ll get used to it.

———————

####  **Epilogue**

She knows Ben is just trying to be cautious, she knows he’s just worried about her, but honestly it’s very annoying the way he keeps setting parameters on her seeing Finn again.

“Outside,” he’d said at once. “I don’t care if he’s cold. Outside.”

“Over an hour after sunset,” had come next, and lastly was the assertion that she should have had at least half a bag of donated blood before the meet up and that she should order a full bottle to drink while there.

“Stop fussing,” she growls at him, because he  _ is _ fussing. He’s not going to be sitting with them but he’s going to be close.

“I will when you don’t rip Finn’s head off and land us back in front of the council,” he retorts firmly, and she can’t even blame him for that. 

Even if he is being very annoying.

“Is this my bratty teenage phase?” she asks him as they get into his car. But he seems too tense to accept the olive branch.

The bar is a quiet one, and the night is still cool enough that there aren’t a lot of patrons in the outdoor area. But there’s Finn, in a sweatshirt and hat, and Rey grins and hurries towards him, holding out her arms to hug him. “Finn!”

And ok—Ben was right. Ben was really right. She feels almost feverish with the way he smells, his neck that close to her nose. One little bite—

“How’ve you been?” he asks. She swallows. The air still tastes like him and she hasn’t let go of him. That’s because she cares about him, right? Her best friend—her brother? And not because his neck—

“All right,” she says pulling away at last. Ben’s watching her. “I mean—it’s been different, and stressful. And…” She takes a deep breath.

Finn has already ordered for them and she spies the bottle of AB Positive on the table next to his gin and tonic. She tries to be casual as she settles into her seat and pops the top off it and takes a heavy sip.

It doesn’t taste the way Finn had smelled. It tastes a lot blander, and more like nutritional value and less like flavor. 

“This ok?” Finn asks her.

She looks at him and wants to cry. There’s  _ Finn _ , sitting right across from her. Everything’s the same and everything’s different. “It’s harder than I thought,” she says.

“Being a vampire?”

“Wanting to suck your blood. I—I wasn’t expecting it to be that…” she glances at Ben, who has the good grace not to give her an  _ I told you so _ look.

“You’re ok though?” She hates the fear in Finn’s voice. She knows he’s trying to be cool. 

“Yeah, I think so,” she says and takes another swig of blood. Everything’s different; everything’s the same.  _ And if I’m not, Ben won’t let anything bad happen.  _ Finn relaxes.

“You happy?” Finn asks her, and she can tell from the tone of his voice that this—this is the answer to the question he cares about most. He’d heard her crying on the phone, they’ve texted a bit through Ben’s phone (though not as much as she wanted because it’s still Ben’s phone. They’re getting her one soon).

Will she ever have another friend like Finn? Another human who she will be frightened of feeding from, who’ll ask her if she’s happy with what she is now and genuinely care about the answer?

“Yeah,” she says. “I am.”

“You sound sad.”

“Trying not to think too far ahead,” she says and she looks at him significantly. His breath catches and his hand moves across the table. She takes it. His skin is so  _ warm _ . Had she been that warm, every time Ben had kissed her?

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Finn says. “We got now, right? This can work?”

“This’ll work,” she promises him and she takes another sip of blood. 

Later, when she’s back in Ben’s car, the exhaustion hits her. She feels like she’s run a mile, like she’s going to pass out. She feels like she can breathe again.

“Yeah,” Ben says knowingly. “It’s like that.”

“How did you manage?” she asks him. “All that time with me?”

And he looks at her and there’s such a softness to his eyes. “Because I don’t know if you noticed this—but I really didn’t want you to die.”

She leans over and kisses him. His lips are soft and hungry against hers and—because she can, she kisses down to his neck and bites down until there’s blood.

There he is. Potato chips and wine and Ben forever. She sighs, and drinks.

**Author's Note:**

> hi kinksame me [here](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)


End file.
